Found the game that Phil Spencer closed first

In the 90s of the last century, Totally Games studio made a name for itself by releasing games about flying. The most famous

the work was a series of space shooters Star Wars: X-Wing. Perhaps another project would have taken this title if Microsoft had not canceled it.

The Axios portal was able to get information (and evenvideo) about the first Xbox exclusive that never happened. We are talking about Knights of Decayden (also referred to as Knights of Decadyn and Project Archipelago) - a game in which Totally games was supposed to combine flying and a fantasy setting. What was the project:

  • Users guided the knight on a flying seahorse. He must move between islands that look like skyscrapers and fly over the sea.
  • The gameplay combined battles at a distance and duels in “slow” with monsters and other knights on the surface. Underwater, the heroes fought against sea creatures.
  • The game included both single player and multiplayer.

Knights of Decayden originally offeredSony to release on the PlayStation 2. But later, the Totally Games project hosted Microsoft. According to the plan, the game was to be released only on the Xbox within a year after the start of sales of the console in 2001.

Totally Games founder Larry Holland mentions,that Knights of Decayden was an "incredibly ambitious and equally stupid project." Creating a new world into a unique combat system was not easy. But this is not the most unpleasant thing - the manager agreed to a short deadline so as not to fire employees or increase the budget.

Developers were forced to work in difficultconditions to “oil” executives from Microsoft. But they had little experience in the gaming field and did not trust the developers - as Holland says, one of the managers had previously worked on Excel development.


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Despite the suffering, the action teams closed inearly 2022. The founder of Totally Games admits that at that time Knights of Decayden really looked raw. &#8220;We haven't eliminated all the problems associated with scale, speed and melee combat&#8221;.

Those responsible for the cancellation of Knights of Decayden werenone other than Phil Spencer himself. Then he just moved to the gaming division of Microsoft. His first task as the general manager of one of the regions was to close the project from Totally Games. He had never done anything like this before.