July 31st was the day when Deep Silver announced its Wii-exclusive title “Cursed Mountain” was beginning the opening stages of development. For those who don’t know, this game is set in the Himalayan mountains of Tibet and Nepal, where an experienced mountain climber (we’ll call him Bob) set out to search for his lost brother, who tried to climb the mountain, but failed to return. This “cursed mountain” is aptly named: nobody has ever succeeded in climbing it before. So we know that this is not Mount Everest, though it might make an appearance in the game.

 According to IGN, Deep Silver has teamed up with Sproing Interactive Media GmbH Vienna to produce a survival horror game of the highest quality; you can even see the wrinkles of the zombified Buddhist monks that will try to gouge out your eyeballs. How are they going to make a Wii game look so good?

 IGN source says:

“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. ” IGN Wii News, August 11th

 Someone who is familiar with this genre will expect only the absolute best out of this game. Newcomers to horror games should be awe-stricken. You can expect the gameplay quality to almost exactly resemble the concept art. This game looks extravagant in its design, and the story sounds solid and deep, but only time will tell how this game will perform, with a release date TBA 2009.

Basically, what gamers will experience is a full-fledged mountain climbing experience in their living rooms and apartments. Just, don’t try to actually climb mountains unless you are a true expert. Now, you don’t normally see these kind of games appear on any console. This is a demonstration of how unique Nintendo wants to make the Wii experience. While Microsoft and Sony are sticking to their violence and sports preference (they do branch out once in a good while, but not enough), Nintendo is exploring all possibilities in producing grand, immersive titles.

Let’s hope this one is as good as gold. Or Silver.