Lost LEGO Civ game leaked from a Nintendo Switch (1) devkit?

[SemiLazyGamer]

According to this R/Gaming Leaks And Rumors thread, there was a lost LEGO Civ game. No other info was shared, but I figured y'all would find it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1jtcjcr/several_switch_dev_builds_has_leaked_from_devkit

 

[cuc]

Yes, this is a pretty interesting could-have-been to hear about.

The source post did not elaborate on this one, so we don't know if it was actually a serious Lego-Firaxis collaboration, though it most likely was.

We only know from the surrounding games that the data should date to circa 2017 (Switch launch year, release of Splatoon 2 & Rime; the other canceled titles were in development around the period).

Like Lego Horizon Adventures - the Lego-ified version of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Lego Group could have approached Firaxis for the collaboration, but Firaxis still had to design and implement the actual game.

And that raises the question: who were its designers?

For example, Sid hadn't been the lead designer in another released game since 2015's Starships, and the last time he tried to lead a Civ game (not counting the social game CivWorld, which had different mechanics) was the earlier CivRev2 with aliens, Atlantis & zombies, canceled around 2010~2011. Could this Lego Civ be his other shot at making a lighthearted Civ spinoff with new ideas?

 

[cuc]

From a Lego games channel: long footage of the prototype, with analysis on its behavior.

From the poster and comments below, some info on its possible origin:

In the titles screen we can see NEX OnlineSubsystem, which is a debug message used internally by Nexon

It was supposedly made by Nexon, who also developed Lego Quest&Collect and owned Bricklink until 2019, according to someone involved in a lot of prototype archiving stuff. They added a mention about it to a Lego wiki in June last year [2024], long before this leak, so I assume they knew what they were talking about. Haven't found another source for that yet though. Another news article claims it's by Firaxis, though nothing else backs that up.