Definitely sad to see that Saints of Virtue – one of my childhood favorites – is about to bow out from the internet. I was surprised to see it reissued for digital download a year or two ago, but it looks like that was just a brief revival. I used HTTrack to save a backup of the site since Internet Archive often misses files. Email me if you want a copy. I also grabbed the monthly “Saints Scoop” newsletters, which I’ll post here in the future. But anyway, that isn’t the cool part.
What’s crazy is that I somehow stumbled across Shine Studios’ homepage, pre-Saints of Virtue. They called themselves Luminous Studios, and this was clearly before they got picked up by Cactus Games. The site hosting is primitive enough that I was able to pull files from the server directly. Some of which I’d never seen before, and I’ll share them here with anyone who might wander this way. First up we’ve got an awesome piece of concept art for World 2, “The Labyrinths of Legalism”.
Notice the “Dungeon of Fear” there in the bottom left corner? And the “Portal to Island” note on the right? That’s right, those are cut areas! Not sure what the Dungeon of Fear was going to be, but the Island is almost assuredly the Isle of Discouragement mentioned in the December ’99 newsletter:
“This place was an island that the player had to escape from. However, none of the easy ways would have worked — they would all lead to discouragement. That can be so like life. The hope though is found in God’s view on things and how we need to see the world through God’s eyes.”
It blows my mind that this game was going to be even bigger than it turned out to be. The levels are just massive already. Anyway, here’s another asset saved from the old Luminous Studios website.
It appears to be an alternate camera angle of the scene used for the box cover art. And then one more goodie for the road… Here we’ve got some kind of teaser trailer for Saints of Virtue. Probably made before they had anything suitable to show for the game itself.