Gee Whiz! Entertainment - Press News

PC GRAPHIC ADVENTURES ENTER A NEW DIMENSION WITH 3DFX

Brisbane, Australia, January 14, 1998 -- Gee Whiz! Entertainment is proud to announce their latest game, Gruesome Castle, a genre busting 3D adventure game for 3Dfx based Windows 95 PC's. The game is a follow up to their previous adventure Flight of the Amazon Queen.

Gruesome Castle concerns the exploits of Jake and Anna King and their pals Skip, Wendy, Brad and Jeepers the dino-monkey. Together they form the Gee Whiz! Mystery Club - an adventurous gang of teens who travel the world solving mysteries.

Their latest adventure brings them to England where they are to visit their cousin Edward at Gruesome Castle. Upon arriving they quickly discover that Edward has gone missing and that the castle is haunted. It's up to our intrepid team to solve the riddle of the ghost and uncover the dark mystery of Gruesome Castle.

The game is light heartedly modeled after the classic Saturday Morning cartoon shows of the 60's and 70's, such as Scooby Doo.

Steve Stamatiadis, co-designer and graphic artists said "We've taken the traditional 2D graphic adventure and brought the game play into a completely real-time 3D world. There are no pre-rendered backgrounds - all characters and locations are completely polygonal."

"Gruesome Castle has all the elements of a great graphic adventure. We've got puzzle solving, exploration, talking with other game characters, and a solid story." said John Passfield.

"And because the game is in a complete 3D environment we've added a lot of innovative puzzles that can only be done in 3D.", added Steve, "For example, players can use their binoculars to zoom in on action taking place miles away - perhaps peering through the window of an unreachable building to see clues that aren't visible to the naked eye."

John Passfield is keen to point out that "Although the game may look like a quality Nintendo 64 title, it's not a Nintendo style action game. This is a 100% pure graphic adventure just like Monkey Island and Sam & Max, except without the pointing and clicking and static 2D backgrounds."

With the game nearing completion, Gee Whiz! are now entering into the stage of looking for a suitable publisher. "We've been working on the game and have kept a low profile for the past year", said Steve, "now it's time to make our presence known and show off what we believe to be one the first and finest titles of this type to appear on the PC. This is definitely a ground breaking game for 3Dfx!."

The game includes a number of stunning technical features such as:

Real time 3D gouraud shaded environments
Hi-color SVGA graphics with 24 bit texture maps
Real time particle system which includes smoke, fire and water droplets
Atmospheric effects such as colored fogging and glows
Multi-pass texture mapping
Real time dynamic colored light sourcing
Transparent texture mapping
Perspective correction
Z buffering
Bi-linear filtering
Dynamic camera system

Game play features include:

Taking control of Jake, players can explore a large castle with scores of rooms, including a Dungeon, Hedge Maze, Vast Underground Catacombs and a Spooky graveyard

Each location is very large with dozens of characters and objects to interact with

Witty dialog via a conversation system that allows you to talk to all the game characters

Inventory system lets you examine and manipulate all of the items that you find during your adventure

Ability to read books allows you to read from the extensive library and uncover the dark secrets of Gruesome Castle

Dynamic cameras in every room give a cinematic feel to game play with pans, tilts and dollies. Players can change from the default mode to any of the many alternative viewing modes allowing them to place the camera where they want it

Includes a Bonus Mystery Quest mode where you seek out the Mystery Club Bonus Items that are hidden throughout the locations. Recovering all the Bonus Items reveals a secret room

Look around mode allows you to look at the 3D location from any angle

Game requirements:

Windows 95, 3Dfx card, DirectX 5 and a P166 with 16 Meg of RAM

. # # #

Gee Whiz! Entertainment's development credits include Halloween Harry, Flight of the Amazon Queen and Zombie Wars.

[Main] [Back issues] [Feedback]