Black Widow Games announced today the development of They Hunger: Lost Souls, its first commercial PC game powered by the award-winning Half-Life 2 Source engine from Valve Software. Based upon the highly popular They Hunger mod series, the upcoming title features a completely new horror-survival adventure. In North-Eastern Europe during the early 1960's, strange anomalies culminate with dead corpses rising from their graves. As a tourist recovering from a tragic accident, you seek shelter in an ancient monastery overrun by bloodthirsty zombies, and become involved in an escalading cascade of calamities.
"They Hunger: Lost Souls is a first-person action game planned to take full advantage of the superior graphics, physics and new gameplay possibilities provided by the new Source technology," said designer Neil Manke. "Without the previous technical restrictions of the now seven years old Half-Life 1 engine, we have been able to produce a brand new game far more exciting and creative than any simple sequel or remake could ever be. Fans of the original series should still recognize the basic gameplay style, although this is an independent story with no previous knowledge required."
The new game is currently 75% complete after being secretly produced for almost a year, and a release date will be announced shortly. Regarding the adoption of a commercial model for this production, Neil explained "Next generation game engines are so complex and detailed that we would never be able to invest so much time and resources for such an ambitious project any other way. Right now we are still working out the pricing and distribution options, but our goal is a low cost alternative so it can be available for just a fraction of other commercial games." Additional information about the game and further news will be available at
www.blackwidowgames.com.
About Black Widow Games: Since 1997, Black Widow Games released 14 contract-work game projects for the Quake and Half-Life technologies, freely distributed as promotional material for the marketing campaigns of a TV series, game magazine, web news site and a theatrical movie. Recent productions include the Half-Life mods USS Darkstar, They Hunger trilogy and Underworld Bloodlines, all released on time and on budget, obtaining wide media coverage and immense popularity.
About They Hunger for Half-Life 1: Originally produced as a series of freely distributed mods contracted by PC Gamer Magazine, They Hunger trilogy resulted in about 2/3 the size of the original Half-Life 1 game, featuring 64 levels, 83 monster types, and over 20 hours of gameplay. According to CNET Gamecenter, it was "the best horror-themed first-person shooter since the original Blood." IGN News named Neil Manke as "the Spielberg of video game level design," and PC Gamer elected They Hunger one of the "10 Scariest PC Games Ever", side-by-side with best-seller commercial games such as Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Aliens vs Predator, and Doom.
