Eidos-Montréal is one of those veteran game studios that constantly appear in the news cycle, but always seem to be tied to some form of drama despite their pedigree. Luckily, Embracer Group has kept it running and working away on a handful of mystery projects, most of which have been scrapped.

Though the current buzz points to the developer now working on an ambitious Alien video game with heavy action-adventure elements, this report from MP1st deals with a cancelled Lord of the Rings project which never got too far. Late last year, Insider Gaming talked about this already, so it's not the first time we'd heard about it, but that noise didn't take off.

MP1st now claims to have gotten their hands on concept art and early tests done for the game, which apparently didn't advance much before being binned. The project joins the reported Legacy of Kain reboot as games that haven't moved forward at Eidos-Montréal recently.

The images show painterly and colourful art depicting what's believed to be the Umbar region of Middle-earth, as pointed by recurring file names and some of the 3D screens introducing a better sense of how the game would've been structured, at least in that region. Apparently, the iconic Prancing Pony inn from the books and movies was part of the game as well, as it wouldn't have been restricted to the area south of Gondor and known for its pirates.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the report is the game would've featured card-based mechanics on top of an isometric view similar to No Rest for the Wicked's and a Telltale-like narrative approach. We lack more details, but I think it's safe to say Eidos-Montréal aimed to make a LOTR game that would've felt quite different from what we've gotten before.

The end of the report underlines the studio is now "deep in development" of a major project nicknamed "P11" that's third-person and open-world. Could that be the rumoured Alien title? Place your bets now.