Not all Dying Light games made it to release. In 2015, Dying Light was released, and in 2022 — Dying Light 2: Stay Human. But between them, there were a number of concepts, one of which would be a radical turn for fans of the series.
In 2016–2017, Techland experimented with Dying Light projects, and one of them was Hellrunners.
Hellrunners was conceived as a "runner", a game with procedural generation or an endless cycle, where the player is constantly running, overcoming obstacles and collecting points, coins, tokens or something else.
But Techland noted that this was just one approach — the team also tried a level structure.
According to game director Tymon Smektała, Hellrunners did not come out, because after several prototypes it became clear that the game did not stand out and did not bring innovation. The project went into the archive, and the team focused on Dying Light 2: Stay Human.
There was no connection between Hellrunners and Nightrunners — Nightrunners appeared later, during the production of Dying Light 2.
