Survival horror puzzler LIT coming to WiiWare

by Scott Jon Siegel { Mar 6th 2008 at 6:20AM }

The genre "survival horror puzzler" sounds like an unholy union of Professor Layton and Resident Evil, and we'll admit that it's enough to get us interested. WayForward Technologies -- developers of the acclaimed Shantae on Game Boy Color -- have just announced LIT, a 3D horror title currently under development exclusively for WiiWare.

According to the press release, LIT follows the story of Jake, who is trapped in a high school overrun with evil creatures, trying to find his girlfriend, Rachael. WayForward's first original IP since Shantae, LIT will feature horror elements, boss battles, and lofty expectations from its developers, who are excited to be working once again with internally-developed properties. Check out some more slick concept art in the gallery below.

[Via Wii Fanboy]

Gallery: LIT on WiiWare

Tags: lit, wayforward, wayforwardtechnologies, wiiware

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nigeria: the graphics have amazing gameplay @ Mar 6th 2008 6:31AM

The art looks interesting, but I prefer puzzles on my DS: the second greatest console of all time.

Godmil @ Mar 6th 2008 8:28AM

You can't leave it at that... what do you think the greatest is?

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Mar 6th 2008 8:41AM

Super Nintendo, Duh!

Nigeria: the graphics have amazing gameplay @ Mar 6th 2008 8:46AM

The Sega Saturn.

Fernando Rocker @ Mar 6th 2008 9:25AM

Super Nintendo too me. So many great games, RPG's, platformers... every kind of game.

And of course, the console with Super Mario RPG =p

ThornedVenom (Harley Quinn Defense Force) @ Mar 6th 2008 2:37PM

SEGATA SANSHIRO~!

The original Elite Beat Agent.

Spakkenkhrist @ Mar 7th 2008 8:18AM

The Amstrad Mega-PC of course.

Obie @ Mar 6th 2008 6:33AM

Some these Wiiware games look sweet, but my Wii memory is full....Nintendo needs to enable the SD card to stream games because the lack of storage is getting rediculous now.

Lynk @ Mar 6th 2008 6:46AM

So delete the games you're not playing at the moment so you can download the ones you want to play right now... you CAN redownload them at any time later on.

Obie @ Mar 6th 2008 6:53AM

I know that, but why should that ever be an option?
What if some even larger Wii ware games come out, should I delete other games just to accommodate them? Shameful and people need to start getting word out that this is becoming an issue.

John Z @ Mar 6th 2008 7:29AM

I think the biggest hurdle to this is the ridiculously slow access time for the SD card; this would cause an unnecessary slowdown either in loading the Wii Menu or the channel itself. I certainly don't KNOW for a fact that that's the issue, but I suspect so when it takes upwards of seconds to copy a tiny NES VC title like Pinball from system memory to the SD card. To say nothing of the minute/minute and a half for copying an N64 game.

I would think that the 88MB of RAM in the machine would allow for the VC's ROM image to be loaded in part or in full, but I'm not an emulator coder/Wii hacker, so I don't know for sure. Still, the machine does have 88MB of total RAM, and the N64 had only a maximum of 8MB. Doing some quick and dirty math here: The largest N64 images got up to 64MB in size. If we assume that the emulator code needs less than 12 MB of space, that still leaves you 8MB for "system RAM" and 2 MB for a frame buffer/video RAM, which may be unnecessary if that's included in the system RAM. Of course, this all depends on if the Wii can repurpose its graphical RAM for code purposes, or if that's all secured with some sort of No-Execute flag.

This comment is more or less too geeky to be of any real use. Please disregard it.

Demaar @ Mar 6th 2008 7:34AM

Redownloading takes forever though. Nintendo's servers are awful. I sure hope they don't skimp on internal storage next gen. Then again, I'm also hoping they don't say "sorry, your game rights are tied to your specific Wii" and expect us to rebuild our retro collections again...

Lynk @ Mar 6th 2008 8:42AM

@ Obie: WiiWare games won't surpass 40MB... and since there is 500MB of usable memory on the Wii it works out to 12 games at the most if they're all exactly 40MB each... which they won't be. Most won't even come close.

@ Demaar: Redownloading takes forever?... *looks around* It doesn't for me and my connection isn't even that fast. Also, I'm sure there'd be some kind of transfer system so taht you can get all your retro games onto your "Wii2" somehow... I'm pretty sure Nintendo would choose to avoid that shitstorm.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Mar 6th 2008 9:14AM

@Lynk,

There's an XBLA game that got moved to wii ware because MS size limits were too low, and thats around 250 mb.

Fernando Rocker @ Mar 6th 2008 9:30AM

Link

In fact, there's no size limit... Nintendo recommends a small size to devs, but there's no limit... Nintendo doesn't put the price either, its the developer. They can include online if they want, and they can put free demos, but it's not mandatory.

Third partys WiiWare titles even have the option to use Mii's.

It's looking very good, specially because deelopers can only release one game per month, so they need to think very well what game to release.

Lynk @ Mar 6th 2008 10:58AM

@ Crono: Yeah, High Definition does do that doesn't it. I'm betting it won't even be anywhere near 100MB on Wii.

@ Fernando: Firstly, it's Lynk... with a y... not Link. I may love The Legend of Zelda but I didn't name myself after Link XD

And yes, I'm fully aware of WiiWare, you don't have to be an advertising board for me. But you're right, Nintendo doesn't enforce a size limit, but they do encourage devs to stay under 40MB. Doing so ensures that those developers see profits sooner rather than later since that aspect IS controlled by Nintendo.

It's interesting to note that FFCC: My Life as a King is under 40MB. Expect to see a lot of games under this limit, even the ones you'd think would go over.

Crazylink @ Mar 6th 2008 7:00AM

"WayForward's first original IP since Shantae..."
I was about to call shenanigans, but I remembered that Namco owns SSS.

DiFiasco @ Mar 6th 2008 8:08AM

I agree wholeheartedly - failing to utilise the SD memory for active gaming seems a bit silly. Both the PS3 and X360 stream from their HD drives - surely this is an obvious solution for the Wii rather than forcing cumbersome data management on the users.

John Z @ Mar 6th 2008 7:31AM

I can certainly dig more original WayForward stuff, but... is it just me, or is anyone else getting a big "Sandman" vibe from this art?

Evan @ Mar 6th 2008 8:08AM

Original IP on the Wii? No surprise. The cost of development on the 360 and PS3 has made publishers hesitant to back anything other than a sequel (or rip-off) of a proven series on those systems.

Evan @ Mar 6th 2008 8:10AM

(*third-party publishers)

Mills and Boom @ Mar 6th 2008 8:15AM

Yup. I remember a year or so ago when some data was released by a publisher. About how much it costs to make a game on 360/PS3, PC and Wii. At that moment you could pretty much guess what was going to happen with the market.

I prefer originality, btw. Probably why I've gone back to playing PS1 games at the moment.

Mills and Boom @ Mar 6th 2008 8:12AM

Is that Vince Noir I see there?

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Mar 6th 2008 8:45AM

Anybody else find it amusing that the best looking (as in interesting) new IPs of the generation are coming on WiiWare, and not on a disc based media platform?

512 mb seems awfully tiny all of a sudden.

Mills and Boom @ Mar 6th 2008 8:51AM

Yup. I'm only looking forward to Smash Bros and Mario Kart this year (so far) on discs. WiiWare and PSN have my attention.

Martez @ Mar 6th 2008 12:36PM

All of a sudden? Really?

Fernando Rocker @ Mar 6th 2008 9:24AM

As I been saying, WiiWare is shaping extremely good... almost every look way better than most third party retail games.

This WiiWare devs. is people who really want to create videogames, but don't have enough money to create a big game.

Keep the good work.