Did you know that there was a BioShock mobile game in the works once upon a time? Studio Tridev, a company that belongs to Indiagames developed a port for the first-person shooter. Unfortunately the game never saw the light of day…
Initially developed for Verizon phones, which pale in comparison to the iPhone and generic Android phones which were released back then. The game ran on Javascript with limited 3D capabilities and only the first four levels were ever publicly released. Now a YouTube video has surfaced with more levels, even the famous ending of BioShock, where the protagonist, Jack, meets with Andrew Ryan.
GamesHub first spotted the footage. Originally there was no audio, but sound was added additionally for effect from BioShock remastered. You’ll see jack wandering through Rapture before finally meeting Jack.
Online gaming publication, thegamer reached out to to former Tridev developer Poornima Seetharaman the lead designer on BioShock 3D, she confirmed stating “Yes, these are the levels we had made,”.
Seetharam commented on the final build of BioShock 3D stating: “Not sure if they were the finally final ones, you know how it is with game development. But yes! If memory serves right, these are almost final if not 100%.”
Seetharam continued, saying that the newely found footage actually didn’t make it’s way into the final game.
“From the design side of things, I had actually cut down a few levels that weren’t contributing to the main storyline,” Seetharaman told IGN. The newly released footage is from planned levels that simply never made it to the public, not cut content”
In an interview with IGN, Tridev’s studio manager at the time, Vijay Venkatramani, dug deeper into the details, talking about the challenges of developing the port, the expectations that 2K had placed on the small team and the creativity that went into the game.
“When development [began] we were told that we had 6 months to get something to market; a scary deadline for a project this big. We would be spending a lot of time repurposing tools from [Predator: The Duel 3D, the game that displayed the team’s technical expertise and won them the project] and adapting them to Bioshock’s gameplay.”
The project was actually quite a technical feat to that time. The small team of developers studied BioShock and worked with massive limitations in order to create a very life-like replica of the game. Hard calls were made, such as levels being cut, auto-aim being enabled by default, and visual cues being used instead of audio cues to signal were enemies were. But considering the limitations, the team still managed to create a stunning mobile game.
