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[wsippel]

Apparently the actual developer is Sproing GmbH, professional shovelware maker:
http://www.sproing.com/website/games_major.html
http://www.sproing.com/website/games_casual.html
http://www.sproing.com/website/games_online.html

*barf*

Well, the same is true for WayForward, Radon Labs, High Voltage or Shin'en. They have to make money some way - that doesn't mean they are not talented. Rabcat (Motorstorm, graphics for Alone in the Dark) and Perspective (GTAIV, Uncharted) seem to be pretty high profile and work on Cursed Mountain, too.

 

[kinosama]

But Rabcat and Perspective are CG outsourcing companies. Sproing's the only listed actual game developer.


There's a difference between honest bad games and sneaky shovelware that's meant to mimic high selling licenses. Look at their products list, what platforms do you see? PC, PS2, GBA, DS and now Wii, and no sign of Gamecube, Xbox360, PS3. Do you have any idea why?

Because some companies are ONLY interested in making shovelware and specialize in it. European Companies like Data Design Interactive, Zoo Digital (though that one can occasionally somewhat hit on an actual brand name license), or that third, even more awful one whose name eludes me that specialized in fake PS2 Disney games, the videogame equivalent of Dingo Pictures if you will. Those companies target the system with the highest, undiscerning userbase, buy a developing license and just dump their cheap crap hoping that some of it will get picked up by misled parents. Apparently, it works because they've been doing this for years.

So yeah the phenomenon is nothing new in Europe, and has just started to reach the US thanks to the Wii's extraordinary tendency to attract crap third parties. I'm all for those companies trying to elevate the quality of their games with an occasional, ambitious project like this one, but anticipating something higher than gnu poop from them without even screens or hands on impressions is not something I can accept to do. You need more than good intentions to make a good survival horror, look at Alone in the Dark. And I'm not sure these people even have the intentions right.

/rant

 

[Fady K]

Havent heard of this before - but survival horror? Interested already.

 

[DDayton]

What's the DS Undercover game like, anyone? It sounds like a "point and click adventure"...

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

Wasn't Panzer Tactics DS supposed to be good? Or am I thinking of something else?

It is (I own it.)

 

[agrajag]

I'm intrigued by the vast draw distance they are promising.

 

[NEO Frog]

http://cursedmountain.deepsilver.com/

Thanks for the link! I like the demon that briefly appears before the site loads. Looks like they will show screenshots and a trailer soon.

 

[ivysaur12]

But Rabcat and Perspective are CG outsourcing companies. Sproing's the only listed actual game developer.


There's a difference between honest bad games and sneaky shovelware that's meant to mimic high selling licenses. Look at their products list, what platforms do you see? PC, PS2, GBA, DS and now Wii, and no sign of Gamecube, Xbox360, PS3. Do you have any idea why?

Because some companies are ONLY interested in making shovelware and specialize in it. European Companies like Data Design Interactive, Zoo Digital (though that one can occasionally somewhat hit on an actual brand name license), or that third, even more awful one whose name eludes me that specialized in fake PS2 Disney games, the videogame equivalent of Dingo Pictures if you will. Those companies target the system with the highest, undiscerning userbase, buy a developing license and just dump their cheap crap hoping that some of it will get picked up by misled parents. Apparently, it works because they've been doing this for years.

So yeah the phenomenon is nothing new in Europe, and has just started to reach the US thanks to the Wii's extraordinary tendency to attract crap third parties. I'm all for those companies trying to elevate the quality of their games with an occasional, ambitious project like this one, but anticipating something higher than gnu poop from them without even screens or hands on impressions is not something I can accept to do. You need more than good intentions to make a good survival horror, look at Alone in the Dark. And I'm not sure these people even have the intentions right.

/rant

Except they've already made a good game or two.

 

[wrowa]

What's the DS Undercover game like, anyone? It sounds like a "point and click adventure"...

And that's what it is!

It's a really nice game. Not great, but good. And it is one of the few adventures which were developed exclusively for the DS.

There is also a PC episode called Undercover: Operation Wintersun, which is slightly better than the DS game.

 

[Gwanatu T]

Havent heard of this before - but survival horror? Interested already.

As am I. We don't get enough of these titles, much less good ones. Fatal Frame IV will certainly quench my thirst when it comes out, but that doesn't mean I don't want more!

 

[Stormbringer]

"Sproing Announces First Details Behind the Technology Driving Deep Silver's Cursed Mountain for Wii" (press release)

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.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/897/897888p1.html


We'll see, I guess...

 

[avatar299]

"Sproing Announces First Details Behind the Technology Driving Deep Silver's Cursed Mountain for Wii" (press release)



http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/897/897888p1.html


We'll see, I guess...

Shadow World....heh

Who thought it was a good idea to announce a new engine and not show a single screenshot, much less video.

 

[castle007]

The developers mentioned that Sadness was their main inspiration for this game.

 

[the-iek]

this game will be shown at games convention, so let's hope for screens.

 

[plank]

Deep Silver announces Leipzig lineup (Cursed Mountain presentation at show)

Deep Silver & Partners are presenting a broad range of different games for every taste at the Leipzig Games Convention 2008. From long-awaited action Role-Playing Games to thrilling adventures, from the fantastic Japanese RPGs to dark RPG First-Person Shooters, from educational handheld games for a young audience to challenging strategy games � Deep Silver and its Partners will offer all of this to the visitors of the Games Convention 2008.

On each day of the convention, there will be live presentations with the game developers, trailers and video shows as well as numerous other surprises that will take place at Deep Silver’s exhibition booth, on an area of over 440 sqm (approx. 4736 sq.ft), which is even larger than in the previous year.

Visitors can experience the following titles at the Deep Silver booth in Hall 3, Booth A02:

Cursed Mountain: For Wii only: The survival horror game that takes place in the Himalayas gives the ultimate thrill. The presentation at the Deep Silver booth will give visitors a chill � guaranteed! (Action adventure; Wii) Publisher: Deep Silver

Secret Files 2 � Puritas Cordis: The second part of the Secret Files series (Adventure; PC) Publisher: Deep Silver

Risen: The developers of the Piranha Bytes team will be on stage in several presentations to answer questions about their new RPG hit. Publisher: Deep Silver

Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel: The sequel to the most successful German Role-Playing Game of all time (Action RPG; PC, PLAYSTATION3, Xbox360) Publisher: Ascaron Entertainment / Deep Silver

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky: A unique blend of action-packed first-person shooting and complex role-playing against the backdrop of the contaminated zone surrounding the Chernobyl power plant (FPS; PC) Publisher: GSC Game World / Deep Silver

X�: Terran Conflict is a brand new, stand-alone game set in the universe of X�. It is the culmination of the X trilogy, with a grand finale that takes us all the way back to Earth’s own solar system. (space strategy; PC) Publisher: Deep Silver

Deep Silver will be presenting exciting new games for young gamers at a separate booth in the children’s area, Hall 2, Booth K12:

Let’s Play range: Titles such as Let’s Play Teacher, Let’s Play Vet, and Let’s Play Fashion Designer (NintendoDS) Publisher: Deep Silver

Horse Life 2: The sequel in the horse simulation series, exceptional in both visuals and game-play (NintendoDS) Publisher: Game Life / Deep Silver

Baby Life: In Baby Life the player takes care of its own, unique baby. As a parent your task is to help the baby grow from 9 months until it is 15 months old. (NintendoDS) Publisher: Game Life / Deep Silver

Link

 

[poppabk]

Because some companies are ONLY interested in making shovelware and specialize in it. Those companies target the system with the highest, undiscerning userbase, buy a developing license and just dump their cheap crap hoping that some of it will get picked up by misled parents. Apparently, it works because they've been doing this for years.

The thing is that some of these companies are obviously eager to do more, such as High Voltage, but they have been restricted to doing licensed games/shovelware because that is what was/is profitable. Now, with the major third parties in large part ignoring Wii in prestige genres they apparently see their chance to move up the totem pole. Hopefully, they are successful.

 

[Arde5643]

The developers mentioned that Sadness was their main inspiration for this game.

:lol


You gotta be kidding me right?

 

[wsippel]

If this is a joint effort by Deep Silver and Sproing, I assume Deep Silver's Vienna studio is working on this as well? Deep Silver Vienna is basically the former Rockstar Vienna/ neo Software.

But Rabcat and Perspective are CG outsourcing companies. Sproing's the only listed actual game developer.

Sure. But there would have been lots and lots of cheaper outsourcing partners. You don't cough up the cash to hire contractors like this to produce shovelware I guess.

 

[Timekiller]

:lol


You gotta be kidding me right?

What are you laughing at? At the fact that it isn't realeased yet or that they didn't even show some in-game footage? Who fucking cares.The Sadness concept alone screams that we need some more deeper stuff and i'm glad that someone got inspired by that.

 

[jrricky]

Interesting.............when is leipzig?

 

[later]

20-24 august

 

[nightez]

This is the most interesting part of this game:

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.

Sounds like the tech is really good

 

[Black-Wind]

This is the most interesting part of this game:



Sounds like the tech is really good

Seeing is believeing.

Sounds like they want to do what the conduit did. . . .but the only way H-V got away with that was with vids and screens.

Show me some effing vids and screens first before you start talking about whats all in it.

I guess they got a pub and thats why they aint as loose as H-V with this stuff.

 

[Stormbringer]

From the official Leipzig GC thread :

Ingame, off-screen pics (some from the not-trailer):






and logo:

Game is more advanced, looks better, this is old version. In-game not-trailer (official soon) shown. Some highlights from a partner:

- 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

.

http://www.revogamers.net/noticias-2749-[GC08]-Impresiones-visuales-de-Cursed-Mountain.html

Environments look really good

More tomorrow, after interviewing them!

the teaser trailer, where the pics came from: http://www.nintendo-online.de/news.php?id=2367

Hard to tell from the off-screen pics/vid, but it would seem like it looks nice so far. Pretty impressive atmosphere.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Need better screens to be able to tell if it looks good or not.

 

[Stormbringer]

Same trailer in way better quality (still off-screen though) :

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38797.html

 

[D-Pad]

I wonder if those grainy shots are grainy because it's off screen, or because it's an in-game effect? Please be the latter, horror-grainy screen filter FTW.

Edit - Trailer says no.

 

[Jme]

I watched the off-screen "not-trailer" and it seemed pretty decent.
It's obviously a work in progress.

I'll say, it's retained my interest. Those screens look worse than the video.
Although, the gameplay looks like it could be a bit boring? Like a lonely scary trek through the mountains. I can see where the instilled sense of fear would come from but it does not scream out "action".

 

[splattergnome]

At least it -sounds- good - I have always been a fan of games where sound design plays a large role, preferring in some genres textured soundscapes over the standard music and sound effects combo. I hope the game sounds like this when its finished, it fits the described theme and atmosphere perfectly.

 

[Threi]

If the last minute or so of the trailer is in-game then consider me impressed. However it isn't a very large direct-feed, so i can't look for signs that it isn't in-game.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Okay, from what I can see.

- The mountains and rocks need better textures, as well as a few parts that need more detail.

- Needs a better character model.

- A little barren. If the place is abandoned like I think it would be, wouldn't there be some vines and spider webs, etc?

... And that's about all I can complain about so far.

Otherwise, I'll have my eyes on this one. Looks interesting.

If the last minute or so of the trailer is in-game then consider me impressed. However it isn't a very large direct-feed, so i can't look for signs that it isn't in-game.

Says in the beginning that it's all in game footage. Though, since this is one of those devs trying to get away from their shovelware past, I can't say if they're honest or not.

 

[Akai]

The game looks really nice, particularly considering that it's not a well-established developer producing it...

- A little barren. If the place is abandoned like I think it would be, wouldn't there be some vines and spider webs, etc?

Well the game DOES take place way up in the mountains of Nepal, doesn't it? I wouldn't expect vines, and perhaps not spiders to tolerate the cold too much, though I'm honestly not familiar with Nepal's ecosystems...

 

[Dascu]

Needs some more work, but looks alright so far. I'm certainly interested in seeing more on this title.

 

[fresquito]

Looks surprisingly good.

The logo is the crappiest I've seen in a while, and whoever thought the trailer was interesting and was good to present the game for the first time needs to think it twice.

 

[Scrubking]

Looks good, but it looked like he was dancing with the ghosts or something.

 

[Eteric Rice]

The game looks really nice, particularly considering that it's not a well-established developer producing it...



Well the game DOES take place way up in the mountains of Nepal, doesn't it? I wouldn't expect vines, and perhaps not spiders to tolerate the cold too much, though I'm honestly not familiar with Nepal's ecosystems...

Good point.

I'll wait for some clear screenshots before I make any further judgements.

 

[Cosmonaut X]

The logo is the crappiest I've seen in a while, and whoever thought the trailer was interesting and was good to present the game for the first time needs to think it twice.

Why? It sets the mood very well & it's an unusual (though effective) location for a horror game. Certainly got me interested!

 

[Black-Wind]

I need some direct feed screens/ vids before I make my call.

But it looks like a work in progress soo I will wait for more screens down the road before I judge this past 'Interesting/ Not interesting'.

Hopefully they will be like the Conduit and make heavy up grades later on (The Conduit's first screens weren't too good either).

Happy to see it's just '2009', gives them time to make these up grades if needed. Would like to know if they plan to use m+ seeing how important motion control seems to be in this game.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Looks like they got HDR running on the Wii.

 

[pitt_norton]

I liked the walking on snow animation.

 

[plank]

Waits for direct feed.

 

[poppabk]

I think the setting has definite possibilities, but we have no real idea of gameplay beyond it is in 3rd person. I'm hoping that they will have some interesting rock climbing sections not just 3rd person survival horror on a mountain.

 

[Dash Kappei]

Scary.

 

[Arde5643]

Environment and lighting look good so far (although this may not be in-game and just CGI).

Need better character models and gameplay is still iffy - what the hell was going on with the somewhat battle-looking scene in that trailer?

 

[blu]

atmospheric. tagged.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Need better character models and gameplay is still iffy - what the hell was going on with the somewhat battle-looking scene in that trailer?

You're dancing of course. It's a horror rhythm game where you try to out dance the ghosts to the beat of the music.

 

[Arde5643]

You're dancing of course. It's a horror rhythm game where you try to out dance the ghosts to the beat of the music.

That's ... actually a brilliant idea!

A horror rhythm parody Space Ulala type game where you defeat zombies and other monsters by dancing to the beat of the music.

 

[nightside]

That's ... actually a brilliant idea!

A horror rhythm parody Space Ulala type game where you defeat zombies and other monsters by dancing to the beat of the music.

thriller. the videogame.

 

[J-Rock]

Interesting. Nice to see it won't be out until 09. Plenty of time to add polish.

 

[batbeg]

That actually looks pretty good, with the already acknowledged exception of the hideous character model (which took me by complete surprise). Consider me interested