One of the biggest issues in the video game industry is studio closures, mass layoffs, and cancelled video game projects, with some that have even been in development for many years and close to completion. This is one of the saddest parts of going to work at a game studio, as you could see something you've spent a lot of time and stress making, never actually seeing the light of day.

Studio closures and game cancellations have been more and more frequent, and some of the games abandoned might've left you feeling very disappointed and empty. Below are the games we would've loved to own in our collection, had we the chance, but can now ultimately only look at gameplay videos, teaser trailers, and concept art.

If you're a fan of the Lego games, there are so many movie franchises you can probably think of that still haven't received Lego game adaptations, but James Bond was one that almost happened. In the leaked pitch trailer, you can see how many fun moments they parodied with the signature Lego humor, like the car chases and Bond with a banana during his iconic gun barrel intro.

It also appears that the game would have touched upon a collection of various Bond films over the decades, including Roger Moore's version and Daniel Craig's. While IO Interactive is now delivering a promising new Bond game, 007 First Light, it still would've been fun to get a Lego James Bond to relive the classic films as well. Sadly, Lego didn't find the content of James Bond all that appropriate.

If you could believe it, we almost had a video game of Martin Scorsese's classic Taxi Driver, one of my favorite films. It was a sequel story that takes place shortly after the events of the film, which would've seen you as De Niro's Travis Bickle continuing his vigilante crusade in the streets of '70s New York. The gameplay felt similar to The Sopranos and Scarface licensed games, as well as GTA and Mafia.

From the 2005 gameplay demo, the graphics and world looked fairly detailed, especially the crash physics. The sophisticated combat system also allowed you to incapacitate enemies by shooting them in the legs, so you can then perform an execution. Robert De Niro himself even agreed to reprise his role for some voice lines. However, Martin Scorsese strongly disliked the idea and killed the game.

The Alien series continues to receive a multitude of new video games, but most are arcade-like shooters, FPS, PvP, or real-time strategy titles. The only one that really nailed the narrative-driven cinematic quality of an Alien film was 2014's Alien: Isolation. But what might've beaten it to the punch, were it not cancelled, was Obsidian's Alien RPG, titled Crucible.

With The Outer Worlds, Fallout: New Vegas, the Southpark RPGs, Avowed, and Pentiment, Obsidian has shown it's a narrative powerhouse. Crucible would mix its signature branching dialogue system with terrifying third-person Xenomorph combat. The gameplay was even similar to The Thing video game, including the implementation of squad commands. As a massive Alien fan and RPG lover, I'm disappointed Sega passed on Obsidian.

Night in the Woods is one of the best indie games ever made, with its likeable and adorable anthropomorphic cat protagonist, Mae, along with its themes of mental health, friendship, and spookier supernatural vibes for the horror fan in me. It was a unique story and a visual and narrative marvel beloved by many. That's why I was excited to get my hands on Revenant Hill, a spiritual successor.

Revanant Hill uses the same art style and, once again, sees you playing as a cat on an adventure, and there's even a whole synopsis to go along with the short announcement trailer. It takes place in 1919, and apparently would lean even heavier into supernatural themes, promising witches, demons, and ghosts. Unfortunately, two team members, including The Glory Society's co-founder, Scott Benson, were dealing with severe health issues, and development fully stopped.

Monolith Productions is a fantastic game studio that developed some of the most noteworthy video games, including the F.E.A.R. series, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War with its Nemesis system. Can you imagine what they could've done with a Wonder Woman game? It easily could've lived up to Rocksteady's Batman Arkham games, especially since it would've brought back the Nemesis system.

Unfortunately, all you got from this game was a CG teaser in 2021 featuring Wonder Woman's design and her lasso, with narration from Diana's mother. To add insult to injury, Monolith Productions itself was shut down with news of the cancelled game. The game was sadly a pawn as a result of the lackluster sales and low scores of Gotham Knights and the live-service Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, two DC games that were mistakes to begin with.

EA is notorious for cancelling games and shutting down studios, but the Black Panther title really hurts, more so because Black Panther's previous outing was Square Enix's delisted Avengers game. This one came from a new EA studio, Cliffhanger Games, which is now also shuttered, and the story would've apparently seen you playing as multiple characters, including T'Challa's son, Azari, Shuri, and Killmonger, and had the Skrulls as the main enemy.

The concept art looks phenomenal, and an open-world Wakanda would've brought even more breathtaking exploration and traversal than possibly Insomniac's New York in the Spider-Man games. As much as I love the Spider-Man games as well as The Guardians of the Galaxy game from Eidos-Montréal, Black Panther is my favorite MCU movie, and I needed that interactive Wakanda with a new Black Panther storyline featuring these characters.

Although EA now gave us Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel, Jedi: Survivor, and Ubisoft came out with Star Wars Outlaws, Star Wars 1313 could've existed way before them and delivered a cinematic action-adventure Star Wars game way sooner. The gameplay feels exactly like a Star Wars game made by Naughty Dog, from the combat to the interactive companion system and cutscene transitions.

The story would've focused on Boba Fett in the underground section of Coruscant called Level 1313, a location featured in the animated Clone Wars series. In the demo, as two characters are making their descent to 1313, their ship, carrying a vital cargo, gets hijacked by a new, intimidating Bounty Hunter droid with dual blasters on its back. The fact that George Lucas also aided development could've seen this as the best Star Wars game.

Instead of the cancelled Prey 2, we got the series reboot in 2017 from Arkane, again titled Prey. It was still a pretty strong successor to the series and did a lot of things right, including the weapons and story. However, the sequel to the 2006 game looked really cool and had a cyberpunk atmosphere and world design similar to Blade Runner.

In Prey 2, you're a US Marshal-turned-bounty hunter, and the way you'd find your targets is through a Terminator-like interface that scans and selects them from a crowd. To engage, it would often result in a chase and a few enemies to shoot, as well as scaling moving trains. The combat also featured the ability to hang from a ledge and shoot, a remarkable and underrated feature you still don't see too often in most modern FPS games.

Hideo Kojima was set to create the next Silent Hill game with none other than distinguished horror filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who would be co-directing his first game. Pan's Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, and The Devil's Backbone are my favorites by del Toro, so it would've been, of course, amazing to see what his creative powers, combined with Kojima's, can do for a horror game, especially in the Silent Hill universe.

Luckily, you still had a playable teaser, P.T., which is indeed one of the scariest horror experiences in the genre, and Kojima is working on OD, a secretive hyperrealistic new horror game. Guillermo del Toro also gave his likeness to Death Stranding to appear in that game. And though we were robbed of their vision for Silent Hills, Konami is slowly making up for that with the Silent Hill 2 Remake, The Short Message, and Silent Hill f.

While Rockstar came out with impressive sequels to its acclaimed games, like Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 5, and now GT6 in 2026, Bully 2 would've been awesome to see as well. The original Bully is one of the more underrated Rockstar video games, and it basically brought the Grand Theft Auto-style crime and social narrative to an upper-class boarding school with student-based missions and activities.

With the graphics and realism Rockstar is capable of achieving with GTA 6 and Red Dead 2, Bully 2 would probably have been one of the most realistic school life sims imaginable. I would've loved to see how they expanded Jimmy's story, incorporated modern social satire, improved on the systems from the original, like the school course minigames, and how much more expansive and detailed they could've made the environments.