Minter and Lionhead's Unity cancelled

Lionhead and game development legend Jeff Minter have announced that their collaborative GameCube project, a rather abstract 3D shoot-'em-up which we were pretty excited about called Unity, has come to an end. In an announcement made to the trade press this morning, Minter and Lionhead said: "Unity was always an ambitious and experimental project and as is the case with such endeavours they do not always come to fruition."

"Both Lionhead and Jeff are disappointed that it has been necessary to take this step despite significant publisher interest. However, a shared commitment to excellence and originality meant both sides agree that the cancellation of the project was in everyone's best interests."

In further comments made on the YakYak.org forums to coincide with the announcement, Minter described the decision to cancel the game as a "horrible" one for the team to make, but conceded, "in the end we had to make it".

"Basically, although I've built a shedload of stuff for Unity in the past couple of years it's become clear that getting it all together into something that I'd be happy to call Unity and put my name to was going to take a lot of time and effort both from myself and the guys at Lionhead, and realistically it was becoming unlikely that it'd be finished in time for anyone to want to publish it on GameCube. The alternative would be a rush job and we simply didn't want to do that. Best to call it a day," he wrote.

You can see the rest of what Minter had to say here, and we wish him and Lionhead the best of luck with future projects.

(With thanks to reader Andrew Gillett who alerted us to this sad news.)