Epic Games has revealed that Infinity Blade Dungeons, a prequel to the best-selling sword and swipe iOS games, has been cancelled. For good.

Originally shown as part of the Apple Special Event to launch the iPad 3 in 2012, Infinity Blade Dungeons was to use Unreal Engine 3 for a different kind of game from the other Infinity Blade titles. From footage shown at that event and subsequently, the new app would have been one of the most spectacular action adventure games for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

It was a dungeon crawler with console-quality graphics, and had a large following wondering why it never made it on to the iTunes store.

The game was effectively cancelled the moment Epic closed in-house developer Impossible Studios in February this year. That team was working on the title at the time so it was "put on hold". But the boss of Chair Entertainment, the developer behind the other games in the Infinity Blade franchise, revealed during an official Epic Games podcast that the game was being scrapped altogether.

"There's not much I can say since Dungeons was not a game we were actually working on here at Chair," said Donald Mustard, its CEO. "It was a concept that originated from Epic, and was an idea we were happy to support.

"But when the studio that was working on [Dungeons] was closed, the game was cancelled. That's really all I can say."

It's official demise will come as a massive disappointment to those wowed by the gameplay trailers that have appeared on the internet over the past year. They might be placated, however, by the news that as part of Apple's five years of the App Store celebrations, Infinity Blade II is available free of charge for a limited period.