Six Days in Fallujah - Development

Development

The team at Atomic Games interviewed over 70 individuals, composed of the returning U.S. Marines, Iraqi civilians, Iraqi insurgents, war historians, and senior military officials, and learned the psychological complexity of the battle. The game's director, Juan Benito, elaborated that "Through our interviews with all of the Marines, we discovered that there was an emotional, psychological arc to the Battle of Fallujah.

Atomic Games describes Six Days as a survival horror game, but not in the traditional sense. The fear in Six Days does not come from the undead or supernatural, but from the unpredictable, terrifying, and real tactics employed by the insurgents that were scattered throughout Fallujah. Benito states that "Many of the insurgents had no intention of leaving the city alive, so their entire mission might be to lie in wait, with a gun trained at a doorway, for days just waiting for a Marine to pop his head in. They went door-to-door clearing houses, and most of the time the houses would be empty. But every now and then, they would encounter a stunningly lethal situation... which, of course, rattled the Marines psychologically." Gamepro has stated that for Benito, giving players a taste of the horror, fear, and misery experienced by real-life Marines in the battle was a top priority. Benito states "These are scary places, with scary things happening inside of them. In the game, you're plunging into the unknown, navigating through darkened interiors, and 'surprises' left by the insurgency. In most modern military shooters, the tendency is to turn the volume up to 11 and keep it there. Our game turns it up to 12 at times but we dial it back down, too, so we can establish a cadence."

Atomic Games has also stated that the game's environments are 100% destructible and degradable thanks to a completely custom rendering engine, and it would surpass that of Battlefield: Bad Company. Tamte states that "This engine gives us more destructive capability than we've seen in any game, even games that aren't finished yet." According to the developers, destructible environments are critically important in telling the true story of the events in Fallujah, as the Marines eventually learned to blow holes in houses using C4, grenade launchers, and air strikes to blindside the insurgents waiting within, being considered as "combat puzzles". It is also stated that the claim of the game containing destructive environments is genuine and not based around a "goofy, out-of-place marketing gimmick."

On April 27, 2009, it was announced that, due to the controversial nature of the game, Konami suspended its role as a publisher. The game is still in development by Atomic games, but Konami will not be publishing it.

On August 6, 2009, Atomic Games said that they were unable to obtain a new publisher and would let go of some staff. A day later Industrygamers stated that they heard from a source, "Out of 75 people, less than a dozen are left and about a third of that isn't even developers. The remaining team is basically a skeleton cleanup crew that will be gone soon too. They are trying to downplay the extent of these layoffs, but the reality is that Atomic is pretty much dead.".

On March 2, 2010, IGN stated that the game is still coming out and is finished. However, as of April 2013, it has not been released.

In August 2012, it was revealed that Sony may have once considered publishing the title. Later that month, Atomic Games' president, Peter Tamte, informed the British website, Digital Spy, that Six Days in Fallujah was "definitely not canceled" and remains "very important" to the studio.