Valve Concept Art Hints at New Project, Canceled Doug Church Game

A gentleman by the username of “Political Gamer” on the Steam forums had a nice trip to the Valve office, and has returned bearing gifts.

Among hype for Portal 2, mention of the new “Meet the Medic” video and other things is the snapshot of a bunch of some alien concept art. It doesn’t match with any of Valve’s established or announced franchises, which is thrilling for a Valve geek like me to speculate over.

However, Valve have also recently hired Doug Church, of Thief and Deus Ex fame and project lead on the recently canceled Spielberg game Project LMNO. An eagle-eyed commenter on the Steam forum pointed out the similarity between the alien-like characters in the concept art and the alien-like features of Eve from LMNO.

To jump to the conclusion that Valve are intending to pick up LMNO and develop it into a full game would be a little speculative. While it is possible that Valve are working on a new IP with Doug Church, they have mentioned in various interviews that they typically decorate the walls with concept art as a source of inspiration during development. Still, from a company whose legacy has consisted of an alien shooter, a team-based shooter, another team-based shooter, a team-based zombie shooter and cake, it would be interesting to see what they could do with something as distinct as Project LMNO.