Demise History & Information
 
Demise is the sequel to a game known as Mordor, which was published back in 1995.(Thanks to Shon-Dahre for correting me on this!)  Anyways, this game was a dungeon crawl game with a very large scope, but rather, well, inanimate graphics.  There was a small 15x15 pixels(or around that) window screen of the dungeon(which was represented by grey walls with black lines for edges and brown doors.  Monsters were shown as small bitmaps next to this window.  Players navigated by using their automap that appeared at the bottom of the screen.
For those that didn't mind the fact that there was no animated graphics, and liked the thrill of building up a character by nurturing them through levels on a few hit points and gradually growing in strength and finding more powerful items - the game was a hit.  The fact that the game was distributed through a small company known as IPC software meant that not many people actually got their hands on this little gem.  However, generally those that did, enjoyed themselves for hours.

The programmer of this game, Dave Allen, decided sometime that a sequel would be a good idea.  So, starting again, he built on his little game called Mordor, and started to add in extra features, improve graphics, and release his work periodically in a limited beta version of the game, which would be known as Mordor 2.

After some time working on the game, Dave decided to add a multiplayer option to the game, allowing players to play over the internet (or a LAN) and work together to eliminate the monsters in the dungeon.  In the first multiplayer release, players could talk to one another, and pick up other players' bodies if they had died.  However, each player's machine kept track of monsters in the dungeon, so players could not travel around in the dungeon, and a room that was empty for one player may have contained monsters on another player's computer.

Around this time, Mordor 2 had quite a decent number of people playing the beta version of the game, and Dave found out that he would have to change the name because Mordor is a name that is an area of land in the mythical world of J.R.R Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. Mordor 2 could not be the name of the game when it was released, else Dave would have to pay the Tolkien estate a large amount of money to use the copyright name.

Soon after this, Dave(who by now had a team of small team of developers & artists with him) got the support of Interplay to help publish the game when it was finally completed and ready to be released.  As a result, the game would be renamed to Infinite Worlds(or IW as it became known), and the beta version released under this name saw the introduction of a concrete plot for the game, which would revolve around the Lord of the Town (Lord Gherrick), and also the introduction of better graphics, included fully 3D animated monsters.

Unfortunately, Interplay were less than enthusiastic about the game, releasing a very uninspiring trailer for the game, which both disgusted and mildly amused players of the game because it was so shockingly awful.  Then a further lack of commitment saw the game & Interplay part ways, again much to the amusement of players, because Interplay denied a split for several weeks afterwards - as some members of Interplay(those in charge of the website) had not been informed by those in charge of Interplay, that the game was in fact no longer being published by them.

Despite all this, players continued to play, and Dave and his team rewarded those players with a new version of the game, unveiling their new name - Demise:Rise of the Ku'tan. This release was even better than the last, featuring full multiplayer capabilities, allowing players to brave the dungeon together in parties.

After numerous patches and new releases of the game, the final version was finally ready to be released.  Fans of Mordor and new fans had found the game and loved it, making it a bigger release than it's predeccesor.  There were lots of great new changes(such as multiplayer), but the same addictive gameplay that had attracted fans of the original was still there.  In fact, so was the distributing company, and Demise is being distributed by IPC Software.