Screenshots of Prince of Persia prototype, created by Silent Hill: Shattered Memories dev Climax
Climax was in talks with Ubisoft in 2012, but they fell through.
Portsmouth-based studio Climax created a prototype for a new Prince of Persia game and held talks with Ubisoft - but they didn't go anywhere.
Climax had published screenshots of a mystery tech demo that set tongues wagging for looking very much like a new entry in Ubisoft's Prince of Persia series. The tech demo was listed under the "future" category of the our games section of the site.
The developer quickly pulled the screenshots after a number of websites reported on the images today, but they are reproduced below.
Climax told Eurogamer that in 2012 it was in talks with Ubisoft about such a game. "The screenshots in question are from a prototype we decided to create last year during exploratory discussions we had with Ubisoft," Climax CEO Simon Gardner said.
"This never went any further."
In January Ubisoft Montreal boss Yannis Mallat confirmed that the Prince of Persia series had been "paused" after a rough-cut demo video for a Ubisoft project called Osiris was discovered.
The demo video emerged after a leaked screenshot for something called POP Zero 2 was seen in August 2012. The new direction looked like a dramatic departure from the bright, painterly Prince of Persia of 2008.
Alongside the Prince of Persia prototype on Climax's website were screenshots of a mystery new game, also due out in 2013.
Some have suggested this is a new Silent Hill game, given Climax has form with the series: it created Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for Wii, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2 in 2009 after Silent Hill: Origins for PSP and PS2 in 2007.
But Eurogamer understands this new game is not a new Silent Hill. All Gardner would say on the subject: "The other title is a Climax game that is in early development."
It should be noted that Climax was a part of the long list of PlayStation 4 developers announced during Sony's New York press conference earlier this year.