Cursed Mountain

Cursed Mountain is an action adventure with horror elements from 2010, set in the Himalayan mountains, where mountaineer Eric Simmons sets out to find his lost brother and gradually discovers that the mountain is threaded through with the ghosts of the dead and dark beings from Tibetan mythology. The game combines mountaineering sections, in which the player climbs rocks, bridges, and snowy ridges, with combat against supernatural enemies using a blessed ice axe and ritual weapons based on Buddhist symbolism, such as prayer flags or sacred mudras.

On Wii, combat used Wii Remote gestures for axe attacks as well as aimed ritual strikes, which could only wound the ghosts at the right points on their ethereal bodies, so the player first had to observe the enemy's movement pattern. The atmosphere was built on silence, thin air, and the isolation of the high-mountain setting, complemented by dark sound design and unobtrusive music that heightened the feeling of loneliness high above civilization, where no outside help can reach. The graphics were among the more ambitious on Wii, though limited by the console's performance, with the work on light and fog particularly noticeable when passing through snowy gorges and abandoned monasteries.

Cursed Mountain received mixed but often favorable reviews at launch, which praised the unusual setting and atmosphere but less so the repetitive combat system and somewhat slower pace. On the very family-oriented Wii it was one of the few genuinely dark and mature titles, which earned it a reputation as a curiosity among players seeking a horror experience on the console. Even today it is valued mainly for its unusual Himalayan setting, which rarely appears elsewhere in horror games, and for its unusual combination of mountaineering with ghost horror, which was almost nowhere else to be found in mainstream productions of the time.