Recently announced mountain-top survival horror Cursed Mountain will feature a photo-realistic Himalayas! Details inside...

Last month we revealed Cursed Mountain, a Wii-exclusive survival horror title that centres on a fearless mountaineer as he climbs the Himalayas to find his lost brother - a quest which awakens the trapped soles of those who have perished on the mountains in the past.

We've now got new details on the technology behind the title, which is said will allow players to see the entire moutain - the whole of the game's world - any time in the game.

Says Harald Riegler, CEO of co-developers Sproing:

"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. 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."

The title will use the Sproing team's proprietary "Athena" game engine, which will render the Himalayas on Wii at a quality "never seen before". The engine highlights of "Athena" include 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.

Sproing are promising the title will take the Wii hardware "to its limits" - and we can't wait to see it. It's about time third-party publishers really started pushing what the Wii is graphically capable of.