Cursed Mountain [Wii]

US, August 11, 2008 - Sproing Interactive Media GmbH, Vienna, today announced that it's currently developing the Wii Survival Horror game Cursed Mountain for, and together with, Deep Silver. The player takes on the role of a fearless mountaineer as he climbs into the Himalayas on a quest to find his lost brother. As he ascends the mountain, he encounters an ancient curse: the souls of the people who died in that region are stuck in limbo, caught in the Shadow World. Deep Silver announced the first details of the upcoming Wii hit title Cursed Mountain on July 31st.

"Aside from the challenge to develop an innovative title with spectacular levels and new controls, the focus in Cursed Mountain is the overwhelming environment of the Himalayas," said Harald Riegler, CEO of Sproing. "It is really important to us that the player experiences nature's powers as realistically as possible, and that the game's viewing distance allows the player to see the monumental landscapes at all times. We are also going to great lengths to make the dead souls look as convincing as possible in order to deliver the level of immersion necessary for really effective and believable survival horror."

To deliver on these goals, the Sproing team relies on its proprietary "Athena" game engine, which is rendering the Himalayas on Wii at a quality never seen before. The engine highlights of "Athena" include amongst others, HDR-Rendering, shader simulations developed especially for Wii in order to display ice, heat and water (realistic reflections and refractions), an ultra-fast particle system for amazing snow storms, soft particles for realistic fog and smoke, depth of field, motion blur, dynamic soft shadows, spherical harmonics lighting, as well as a high performance level-of-detail and streaming system in order to provide long viewing distance of the entire surrounding. In order to create an exciting atmosphere when battling the ghosts, the game employs a number of custom-created special effects such as the shader simulations as well as a newly developed post-processing framework. "Our engine technology really takes the Wii hardware to its limits and Wii gamers can really look forward to a heart-stopping, and breath-taking world that comes alive with this title," said Gerhard Seiler, Technical Director of Sproing.

- Huge enviroments inspired by trully Himalayian places. Not only mountains and paths, but town, villages, temples and monastery, as well.

- A lot of reseach about people and buddhism to get a trully behavior in CPU characters. They can be persons, phantoms, souls, demons, etc.

- Even with the big enviroments, solid graphics in buildings and many textures. Also good particle effects. Not so good character design and animation yet, early version.

- Why Wii?
1st: Wii is "pretty powerfull" and they can got all they want: enviroments, effects, etc
2nd: They are really interested in motion sense for erverything: combat, climbing... They didn´t want just to press a button once a again, they want a real fight with hard movement (he moved his armed hardly)

- Find out what is real and what is an illusion.

- It is a mix of survival horror and exploration in the adventure, with some climbing as well. There will some issues to resolve to go ahead, but not classical combination puzzles

IGN: You are using the Wii remote in a few unique ways related to the stormy mountain itself and also sound cues. Can you explain what you're doing?

Martin: With the astonishing rise of the Wii and its unique controls we thought Cursed Mountain and its innovative control system would be a perfect match for the Nintendo platform. The idea to use gestures for combat is based on real world prayers, so called mantras. Cursed Mountain uses this idea as a basis and adds some features that offer familiar and some innovative gameplay elements and game flow. We are actually using the controls to open the player's body language, forcing them to face their fears as they are fighting their enemies with the mentioned gestures. Doing so, the player will be pulled even deeper into the atmosphere of the Tibetan mountains.

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IGN: Why do you think Wii owners should be psyched for Cursed Mountain?

Martin: Cursed Mountain is the first game that combines the elements of mountaineering, Buddhism and horror. We are offering the player a new and very unique setting on the top of the world. The background story is based on real world facts and people who are interested can dig even deeper in the history of religious rituals in the breathtaking environment of the Himalayas. Cursed Mountain is pushing the hardware to the limits and will offer the player visuals and scenic views that are completely new to the Wii. Gamers will have the opportunity to find out, how powerful their Wii console actually is.