As LawBreakers developer Boss Key Productions enters its twilight phase, studio head Cliff Bleszinski decided to show gamers what could have been. This came in the form of concept art for three games that never made it into production. While they can never indicate how well the games would have played, these images show that Boss Key certainly had a lot of creative ideas. As you take them in, be sure to pour one out for a passionate studio that closed too soon.

Bleszinski posted everything on his Twitter, including his pitches on how the games would have played and what they could have brought to their respective genres.

First up is what he referred to as "Mario Kart on water with animals in VR."

Named Donuts, it would have cast players as animals racing down scenic rivers. It would have also been in VR, which would have certainly set it apart from other cartoony racing games. It also would have stood out among most VR racers that try to go for realism. With so much uniqueness going for it, it's a wonder it was never funded.

On the more serious side is DogWalkers, intended to be a multiplayer game where teams work together to man a giant, quadrupedal robot tank. Bleszinski compared the machines to Zoids, which is already an amazing selling point.

It's a little easier to see why it was never picked up, however. VR multiplayer is still a bit of a gimmicky thing, with not enough people owning VR units to create a large enough community. Also, people love being the stars of the show in multiplayer, bragging over the number of kills they get and how many times they are #1 in Fortnite. Forcing them to sacrifice stardom to focus on one role like manning a single tank gun might not fit into the current multiplayer gaming mindset.

Finally, the most fleshed out idea is DragonFlies. Combining pretty much everything that is awesome, players would have been "ninja/samurai in airships riding dragons fighting zombies with friends in a PVE "feudalpunk" setting on floating islands."

Players would have been able to customize their dragons for both melees and gun-based combat.

They also would have been able to hatch new dragons and raise the little guys into fighting machines.

Overall, these seem like three solid ideas for games. They also serve as a reminder on how fickle the gaming industry can be. For every uninspired Call Of Duty or yearly Madden iteration, scores of passion projects like these get buried in pre-production. And for every controversial company that makes millions while raising gamers' ire, a smaller studio of talented folks like Boss Key goes under. There is a silver lining, however, in that the staff of Boss Key is currently being snatched up by other studios. Perhaps that means that interesting ideas like these can live on somewhere else.