5 minutes of cancelled TimeSplitters game footage shared online

Footage from Free Radical’s cancelled TimeSplitters game has been shared online by the team’s head of art.

The studio was closed in December, just two years after it was re-established, as part of huge company-wide cuts at Embracer and its owned publishers.

The team was working on a new game in the TimeSplitters series, the last of which was 2005’s TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. However, the closure of Free Radical means the project has likely been cancelled.

While none of the game was actually shown off, its head of art Rob Steptoe has now posted five minutes of footage from the game on his LinkedIn account.

The footage, which appears to show gameplay from a mainly third-person over-the-shoulder perspective similar to Fortnite, is branded TimeSplitters Next.

Embracer-owned publisher Plaion confirmed on December 12 that Free Radical had been closed.

“It’s with a heavy heart that we must announce yet another difficult decision,” the company said in a statement issued to VGC at the time. “Today, we have to confirm the official closure of Free Radical Design, and say goodbye to many remarkable, talented and hard-working people.

“We are beyond grateful for their incredible contributions to Plaion and wish them the best of luck and success on their professional journey from here on out.”

Further reading

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Embracer cancelled 29 unannounced games between July and December

Restructuring plans have also seen seven internal studios closed

On the day the studio was closed, a QA designer wrote: “Free Radical Design was a hub of creativity, but sadly, we join an ever-growing list of casualties in a broken industry where entire studios are treated as replaceable cogs in a soulless machine fixated on nothing but share prices.”

The first iteration of Free Radical Design was formed in 1999 and developed the TimeSplitters series and Second Sight. Following the disappointing reception of Haze and a cancelled Star Wars: Battlefront project, the studio went bankrupt in 2008.

Plaion and its parent company Embracer announced in May 2021 that a new Free Radical Design had been established by original founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to bring the TimeSplitters IP “back to life”.