343 Industries game jams

Concept art for Halo: Starfighter; the only known game jam with released artwork.

"All those Hackathon games...lost in time.... lol"

— Kevin Schmitt, former Senior Gameplay Designer at 343 Industries

A number of game jams (or "hackathons") have occurred at 343 Industries; internal events in which small teams of game developers spend a few days making a small game prototype. These events are often used in the games industry as a way to encourage prototyping for new games projects, or as a fun event for developers to experiment with ideas. The internal game jams at 343 have resulted in a number of known prototypes that have never seen the light of day, generally surrounding takes on the Halo franchise exploring game concepts outside of the series' typical first-person shooter and real-time strategy roots.

Due to the nature of a game jam, these projects are not games that were ever intended to go into full development, nor are they an indication that the projects in question were to have ever been released. Despite this, their cancellation has been attributed by several ex-343 developers including Halo Infinite Senior Designer David Ellis and Senior Gameplay Designer Kevin Schmitt as having a negative effect on internal studio morale - a particular issue during the tumultuous development process for Halo Infinite.

As of February 2024, there have been 20-30 Halo ideas pitched within 343.

Known projects

Deluge

One project, codenamed "deluge" in several ArtStation images uploaded by ex-343 concept artist Josh Kao, appears to be a Flood-themed game or mode of some kind. The artwork depicts the armor, weapons and vehicles of Halo 5: Guardians, suggesting it was created some time roughly between 2015 and 2018. The three pieces were uploaded as part of a wider series of unreleased Halo pitch concepts including Starfighter and a vision of what appears to be an updated Warzone for Halo Infinite.

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  The first image, titled josh-kao-scary-delugevfinal.jpg?1740207575.
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  The second image, titled josh-kao-deludge-illustrationfinal.jpg?1740207549 .
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  The third image, titled josh-kao-overgrowth-delugefinal.jpg?1740207562 . It is unclear whether the term overgrowth refers to the Halo 5 multiplayer map of the same name.
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  An early Halo Infinite concept by Darren Bacon depicting Spartans fighting the Flood. It is unknown if this piece is related to the Deluge artwork.

MOBA Halo game

One of the projects created in the game jams was a MOBA. The game was presented internally by Kevin Schmitt, though no other details are known.

Turn-based strategy Halo game

A turn-based Halo game, inspired by Valkyria Chronicles, was created by David Ellis during the internal game jams and mentioned by him on Twitter in response to a custom user-made Forge map that turned Halo Infinite into a turn-based role-playing game.

Starfighter Halo game

Main article: Halo: Starfighter

Halo: Starfighter was a game jam prototype worked on by a number of developers at 343, and first revealed by Josh Kao in a portfolio upload on ArtStation. A few details followed this, including a name and basic premise; a space fighter combat game in the Halo setting, similar to the Sabre and Broadsword levels in Halo: Reach and Halo 4. Writer Jeff Easterling noted that the project was unlikely to ever see the light of day.

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  A concept mockup of Starfighter's gameplay.

Other projects

One such unnamed project, undertaken some time prior to mid-2016, involved the development of a weapon prototype known as the Multi-Target Tracked Attack. This weapon was taken by Halo 5: Guardians Senior Systems Designer Chris Proctor and implemented in-game as the Shardstorm launcher weapon the Grunt Goblin which was ultimately implemented in the Warzone Firefight update.

Former Halo Franchise Development Director Frank O'Connor made many unsolicited pitches during his tenure. One of them being a Moon Patrol inspired Warthog game. Employees such as Brian Jarrard encouraged him to participate in a hackathon with this pitch.

Many projects were planned across the last ten years, including a game in the same style as Halo 3: ODST and installments both spanning the galaxy and "intimate" in scale, along with one with a "really dark" tone.