Set in the late 1980s, gamers will take 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. Villagers, pilgrims, mountaineers and Buddhist monks – dead but not yet reincarnated – are all that is left on the mountain. Terrible visions will disorient him, and ghosts and demons block his path. But the question remains – is his brother still alive?

Designed exclusively for Wii, Cursed Mountain features rich visuals and breathtaking views – set on the roof of the world in the life threatening death zone, the entire game world is visible from every level. The gesture-based combat system takes full advantage of the Wii motion sensitivity. Players will use the Wii Remote to look around, sense the environment, climb and fight enemies.

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.

Cursed Mountain, developed by Sproing, is scheduled for a worldwide release for Wii in 2009.