After a tumultuous few years, the Cannibal Holocaust game is still happening but looking a little different
Now due in 2024 across multiple parts.
Cast your mind back to April 2020, and you might recall the wholly unexpected announcement that infamous 80s jungle horror Cannibal Holocaust would be getting a video game sequel. The project's seen a tumultuous few years - and several changes in direction - since then, but its developer has now shed a little more light on its behind-the-scenes struggles, and provided an update on the form it'll take when it eventually arrives next year.
Cannibal, as the project was initially known back in 2020, was announced as a collaboration between Italian developer Fantastico Studio and Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato. Based on one of Deodato's unpublished screenplays, it's technically the fourth sequel to Cannibal Holocaust - a movie that gained notoriety on its original release for its graphic violence, depictions of sexual assault, and actual animal cruelty, making it something of an unlikely candidate for the video game treatment.
In a new interview with PC Gamer, Fantastico's creative director Andrea Valesini explains its original concept for the game was to adapt Deodato's screenplay into a format resembling a visual novel. As per its initial announcement, the project was due to release by the end of 2020, but after an unexpectedly positive response to Cannibal's reveal, the studio decided "it definitely made sense to invest more money into the game" and opted to tackle the screenplay in a more ambitious form, turning it into something closer to an point-and-click adventure.
Soon after, the project hit its first few bumps as the studio navigated the COVID pandemic and some legal issues that ultimately meant it had to distance itself from the Cannibal Holocaust branding. Undeterred, Fantastico enthusiastically pressed ahead, and its more ambitious take on Deodato's screenplay reemerged as Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare in December 2020.
That ultimately proved to be a contentious choice of name, and the studio was soon faced with accusations of racism and insensitivity over its depiction of Borneo's indigenous peoples. And while Valesini pushes back against these claims of racism in the interview - arguing, "If they had seen the movie, they would know that it is always the white men who are portrayed as savages" - the incident caused another stall in development.
Eventually though, following a trailer recut, the controversy began to abate and development picked up pace once more - and by August 2022 the project had adopted an even more ambitious guise, switching from a 2D adventure to a fully 3D first-person horror game. Sadly, however, Deodato passed away in December last year after a period of ill health, ultimately creating further complications for Fantastico.
In an update shared on Steam earlier this year, the studio explained, "As you may know, Ruggero was the main investor in our ongoing project, Borneo: a Jungle Nightmare. Unfortunately, due to a lack of funds, the development has been halted." Instead of abandoning the project altogether, however, Fantastico decided to return to its original, more financially viable vision, once again focusing on creating a visual novel based on Ruggero's screenplay.
Now renamed Cannibal Tales, it was to consist of three intertwined episodes - The Interview, The Embalmer, and Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare (the latter being the paused 3D project) - each following three different characters, with the first episode due in "winter 2023". But two months on, those plans have evolved again, with PC Gamer reporting the visual-novel-style episodes one and two are now due starting in January 2024 under the name Cannibal Tales, while episode three will release as a standalone (albeit narratively connected) 3D adventure under a currently unannounced name that'll ditch the controversial Borneo link altogether.
This latter project is now being developed in Unreal Engine 5 in collaboration with Italian studio Troglobyte Games, and is currently due to release "at the of of 2024".
So there you have it; despite numerous setbacks, the late Ruggero Deodato's unpublished Cannibal Holocaust sequel lives on, thanks to the seemingly unflappable dedication of Fantastico Studio. Whether the beleaguered project manages to hit its latest target with no further hitches remains to be seen, but it'll still be fascinating to see what comes of the developer's efforts after all this time.