Sony Santa Monica is hard at work on a reboot of God of War, a tentpole franchise for more than a decade. But at one time, the studio had been working on a new IP that got cancelled when layoffs hit the developer in 2014. Now it appears that concept art may have leaked from the aborted game, giving a hint of what the sci-fi game might have been about.

The images, first spotted by nerdleaks, are supposedly from Erik San Juan, a concept artist a Sony Santa Monica where he did character modeling and visual development for Kinetica and many of the God of War Games on PS2 and PS3. His resume says he "Led the Concept Art incubation team for 2 years and later the Character Concept Art team while in full production. Provided 2D/3D concept art and models for a new PS4 IP in development which was later cancelled." The art apparently is no longer on his site, but has been backed up on Imgur.

According to a URL in one of the images, the project was supposedly codenamed Darkside. The art has a distinct feel of James Cameron's Avatar, showing humans on an alien planet populated by fantastic beasts and alien races. Some characters had names (August, Donovan and Nighthorse), and there is a variety art showing nefarious creatures that could have been enemies or just dangerous indigenous life. There is even a massive sea beast that dwarfs an underwater vehicle.

Obviously we will never know what the project really was unless it is magically resurrected again, but the concept is interesting enough that it would have been fun to know what the real game would have entailed.