Dan Borth, a developer for Red Fly Studio, spoke candidly through a Reddit AMA about its cancelled Darth Maul game which was meant to be published by LucasArts when they "had really only started to get our footing." He hopes to see the game be revived either by Electronic Arts or Disney. Given the surge in Star Wars interest, a Darth Maul game would be right on trend.
Through his responses, the game would have you play as young Darth Maul from around age 9-11 right through Episode 1, where you see "he went through to become a Sith." You would see the torture that the Emperor did on Maul and "show how you as the player would have made the same mistakes and ended up a Sith."
Combat would have centered around the Sith's dark powers:
Combat was a challenge but we settled on a reverse fear mechanic and combat that was similar to Arkham. In our story he rarely fought characters with lightsabers – those had to be Jedi and we had to explain who they were and Maul had to keep his existence a secret.Me too.
For further detail, Borth explained that this "fear mechanics" would influence how enemies interact and that, for example, you could hide in the rafters as Maul and then look down at three guards and see how fear would influence them. Enemies vulnerable to fear will scurry if you start chopping heads or make mistakes like running over a raling and killing themselves. (Ha, fantastic.) Those strong to fear might blow your cover so it's better to "split them up and deal with them on a one on one basis." Maul can also use his probe droids to sever communications, hack computers, and generally offer a break from combat.
Red Fly Studio plans on getting "a full next-gen demo of all things Maul to show to the powers that be" which they have been working on their spare time. They hope that it will impress Electronic Arts and are confident that it will (or at least close to it).
As for a potential crowdfunding approach, Borth says that "it's all up to the IP holder" and that that "they are usually against [if] it doesn't fund, it will hurt the IP/brand". That said, a successful crowdfunding effort would hopefully lower the risk for a potential publisher to approve it.
He would also "vote for an easter egg where maul kills jar jar over and over" or include a cheat code that replaces the models of all humanoid enemies with Jar-Jars. For that alone, I bet many would come onboard.
