Introversion’s Rezzed Session Explains What Happened to Subversion

Developer Introversion took the opportunity at Rezzed to explain why they stopped working on Subversion and how the technology they had used for it became Prison Architect, which was playable at the show.

The full session, seen in the video above, contains some footage from Subversion, as well as slides featuring shots from the early development stages of the game.

Subversion was meant to be the second game from Introversion, but was suspended in 2011 after turning out to be a "little too ambitious" according to the developer's website. In a post from October 17, 2011 on the Introversion forum, Chris Delay wrote,

"Around June last year, we pushed ourselves as hard as we could and made a playable slice of the game, and demonstrated it publicly at the World Of Love conference in London. The demo went well, but was heavily scripted. Internally we had come to realise that somewhere along the 6 years of part-time development, we had lost our way. We couldn’t even remember what sort of game it was supposed to be anymore. We’d ended up with a game that looked and sounded brilliant, classic Introversion with its blue wireframe and sinister faceless characters. But there was a massive gaping hole where you would normally see a “core game”."

Prison Architect, however takes the software used for Subversion and applies it to a Dwarf Fortress-esque voyeuristic management sim in which you construct a prison and watch the grisly themes play out as a response to what you have built.

Prison Architect doesn't release until late 2013 but this session provides a really interesting look into some of what to expect.