First the good news — according to Zootfly CEO Bostjan Troja, the Ghostbusters game footage clips that we reported on Sunday were very much real.
“What you’ve seen is indeed in-game footage of early prototypes on the Xbox 360, running on ZootFly’s proprietary engine,” he told us via e-mail this morning.
So there you go — not the Source engine. Not a fan mod. Someone, somewhere was working on what would become a legitimate Ghostbusters title. But not so fast.
As suspected, licensing issues reared their ugly heads, putting a stop to work on the Ghostbusters title. While Bostjan tells us that Zootfly is actively working to resolve the issues with the owners of the Ghostbusters IP, part of the Zootfly team have begun work on another title.
“[We’re] currently working on an original game called TimeO, which is closely related to Ghostbusters,” he explains. “The game follows the adventures of two die-hard New Yorkers. They get trapped deep in the shadow world of a parallel New York. The city itself is a war machine threatening to wipe out our world and they have three days to stop it.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Ghostbusters fans; there’s still a shimmer of hope for the title.
“As soon as the Ghostbusters IP issue is resolved, the whole team will go back to Ghostbusters.”
In the meantime, hit the jump for some footage of Zootfly’s TimeO.