The main hero Alexander Nesterov is a meteorologist occasionally caught inside an old nuclear ice-breaker North Wind, frozen in the ice desert many years ago. This steel creature once fought for its life and freedom, but has fallen into an ice trap and all the creatures on its board lost not only their natural look, but a right to die. Cryostasis is a story about a drama of a Captain and his Ship evolving in the atmosphere of animal fear.

Today’s game developers aren’t just interested in high-quality, realistic-looking graphics, they want games that immerse the player into the virtual world. For total immersion, a gaming environment has to “feel” as real as possible and characters must be able to move and interact with the objects in the environment that have a compelling and dramatic impact on game play.

“For Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, it was imperative that the game’s visual effects were properly augmented by a living, breathing environment that actually affects the level of immersion players will experience,” said Darryl Still, International Publishing Director at 1C. “NVIDIA PhysX technology was the only development platform that enabled us to pull off this highly interactive and scary story.”

With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the virtual world of Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason comes to life: clothing can be frozen or unfrozen, broken glass becomes something to avoid, and other objects such as boxes, barrels, and water pipes take on a life of their own when shot at or destroyed.

“1C and Action Forms, the developers of Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, have produced what will arguably be described as the spookiest game ever to hit the PC platform,” said Roy Taylor, vice president of content relations at NVIDIA. “Gamers are going to love the blend of horror and science fiction storytelling that puts them in the middle of a nuclear ice-breaker, circa 1968. This is one you will need to play with the lights on!”

Features :

• The game develops with help of a unique system called Mental Echo - the ability to penetrate another character's memory and change the actions taken by the character in the past
• Highly detailed levels based on a real Russian ice-breaker
• More than 15 fearful enemies with unique capabilities
• 7 NPC’s which help to reveal the story
• 8 historically-authentic weapon types
• A physics and weather system with realistic ice, frost and snow

The player’s goal is to prevent the ship's and captain's death using Mental Echo by correcting other characters' mistakes that have been made in the past.

The game is being developed on the proprietary top of the edge AtmosFear 2.0 engine which is on a par with the most advanced world’s game technologies.

Technical engine features are:

• Unified Dynamic Shadowing system – fully dynamic, moving light sources casting soft shadows on all objects
• Parallax mapping/displacement, alpha and color projective, depth of field, gloss map, tone mapping
• Advanced characters’ and objects’ physics
• Realistic fur dynamically illuminated by light sources

Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, developed by Action Forms, is currently scheduled for release date in 2008.

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