IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-02-unseen-footage-from-a-forgotten-witcher-game
In 1997, a Polish team by the name of Metropolis Software, led by Adrian Chmielarz (Bulletstorm, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter), was making the game. I talked to him three years ago about this Witcher game that never was but until today had never seen it in action.
I never thought I would, either, because Chmielarz told me all data, including the working prototype, was lost. "As it turns out, CDs actually don't hold all your data for 100 years!" he said. All his attempts to recover data had failed.
But where he failed others have succeeded - two members of the original Metropolis Software team no less: Kacper Reutt and Jarek Sobierski. It's they who join Polish video host Arek Kaminski to show around 10 minutes of prototype footage from the game.
"I know it sounds a little cliché or funny in 2014," Chmielarz told me, "but in 1997 it wasn't really obvious. These things like moral choices or hard choices or slightly darker storytelling - it wasn't common. But that was the goal and it was all because of the quality of the source material - it inspired us to do something very special."
The game got as far as a playable first chapter and signing a publisher - TopWare - but was too ambitious and the developer too overworked with other projects. Gradually more dust piled up "until it became clear it was never going to happen", Chmielarz said.