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'Zelda-'Inspired Adventure Game 'Oceanhorn' Revealed, Looks Gorgeous

posted November 7th, 2011 2:59 PM EDT by Brad Nicholson in Action, Adventure, iPad Games, iPhone 4S, iPod games, iPod touch games, News, Upcoming Games

We've nailed our collective pants to our chairs, but they keep flying off when we look at the first image from Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas. Finnish developer Cornfox & Bros describes it as a Zelda-'inspired' action adventure game that seeks to put the focus on puzzles and exploration instead of RPG sub-systems and menus. It's also gorgeous -- like, your-pants-will-pop-off kind of gorgeous.

The name of the game is derived from the fiction's ancient sea monster who "terrorizes" the World of Uncharted Seas. You'll play as a "nameless hero" tasked with killing this monster and saving his sister. In order to accomplish these things, you'll need to explore the world in boat and on foot, and undoubtedly plunge into some puzzle-y areas filled with treasure.

We don't know about you, but we can't help thinking about Wind Waker whenever we look at the art and consider Cornfox & Bros's pitch for Oceanhorn. Bring it on, we say, because the world needs more of these games.

UI and effects not final or missing, FYI.

Cornfox & Bros, one of the gaggle of developers responsible for Death Rally if you didn't know, is expecting Oceanhorn to hit at some point in 2012. This reveal first appeared to our forums and the studio says it'll continue updating its thread as it reveals new information. There's also a blog, too, which is revealing some other cool mechanics. For example, apparently Oceanhorn can attack "at any time" while you're sailing the high seas in your upgradeable boat. So excited!

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  • Fredrik Jackson

    GETTING!

  • http://twitter.com/Silenux Silenus

    Although I don't like copying, I love Zelda too much  to pass this up.

    Coincidence I'm playing Wind Waker atm.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ELM6T7DU5NS7DRZK6XG3WLISKA Carl Maggio

      I too am playing Wind Waker (for the gazillionth time) and I can't help but think that the story and the game it's self is much like Wind Waker, but I love Zelda too much to pass it up

  • http://www.facebook.com/Fi2do Brian Gonzalez

    Holy shit this looks awesome!

  • http://twitter.com/At_God Austin O'Halloran

    Looks bloody gorgeous! If it's anything like the Zelda franchise i'll buy it

  • http://twitter.com/Sanuku Sanuku

    Now let`s hope that the Developer has the Balls to make it a Full Price Title (10 €/14$/...) and add enough Content to make it worth being Named in the same Sentence as Zelda.

  • Ciaran O'Brien

    Great Wind Waker look-alike. Hopefully it will be just as good to play. I would pay up to £5 for this (about 7 or 8$?).
    Looks great!

    • http://twitter.com/Inaba_kun Phil Baxter

      If you really want something with Zelda level production values, you'll have to pay a LOT more. Zelda Spirit Tracks for the DS will set you back £25. If you remove the cost of manufacturing, distribution, and the retailer's cut, you'd still end up at around £10-12.

      Personally I'm fully in favour of high price iOS titles, as long as the production values are good enough to back it up. And by high price, I mean £30-40.

      • Anonymous

        There is no reason to charge more than $20 for an iPhone game.  There is almost no overhead.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HZFQX74CCVATPLOS4ZM76LMGAY Joe

        I would wager that the largest overhead cost in taking a game from concept to reality comes from human expenses.  Having a large, experienced development team will obviously cost more than programming the game yourself.  And this should be the case across the board.  One team of five programmers working on an iOS game would probably not be substantially more or less of an expense than a team of five programmers working on a console game.  The most obvious difference between them would be that one is a tangible, physical object, and the other is invisible data delivered via the Internet. ("It's a series of tubes!") But if that is the difference in overhead that you foresee, I really don't think it would amount to much. It's a plastic disk and a plastic box. In bulk, that's probably pocket change. Maybe the question is not whether iOS games are underpriced, but whether console games are overpriced.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HZFQX74CCVATPLOS4ZM76LMGAY Joe

        I suppose the answer to both questions is "it depends on the game."

      • Anonymous

        the last sentence was a good point - food for thought if you will. But there is a ton of overhead in the "traditional" hand held market - advertising, packaging, shipping, materials to build the physical game (cd or cartridge).  While these things individually may be pocket change, 1 million CD's or cartridges adds up.

      • Jonas Pooters

        hmmm and i dont think that cornfox & bros would do that... if you look how much death rally is now.... and begingwith 3€ or so

  • http://twitter.com/Inaba_kun Phil Baxter

    Very pretty but I notice that the screenshot is called "bullshot-small.png"

    • Noah

      That nameless is hero is about to get bullshotted by those mean trolls coming up behind him!

      • Anonymous

        He's about to get trolled!  (sorry)

  • Anonymous

    if it ever hits the ipad i would consider it.

    • http://twitter.com/Jasoco Jason Anderson

      My god. Me too. It would look amazing. At least give it the "Tiny Tower" treatment and release a full Retina resolution game with a border. It's the least they can do seeing as scaling an iPhone game on a non-Jailbroken iPad looks like crap. Universal version = day 1 purchase.

  • http://twitter.com/neochrono j

    TBH it looks more like Golden Sun then Wind Waker Zelda in appearance, Character on Screen looks kinda Like Issac (http://goldensun.wikia.com/wiki/Isaac)

  • Anonymous

    Looks cool. I'll get it as long as it tries to be its own game like Darksiders, rather than a rip-off like Sacred Odyssey.

  • Anonymous

    the only way this will work is if they completely keep the leveling system out like Zelda does.  They also need to need to work hard on gameplay mechanics such as terrain interaction and movement of character.  These are the areas that other companies have dropped the ball.  If you want to see a AAA failure just play gameloft's attempt.  They royally failed.

  • Anonymous

    a premium price doesnt bother me - IAP bothers me and with the "upgradable" anything comment it makes me immediately think they'll list price low and then try to con you into buying stuff mid game.. maybe im stuck in the past but when i buy a game i want the WHOLE game - not this exclusive in app purchase item BS these companies try to pull anymore!

    • Alex

      The only time IAP's make sense are upgrade to full version.

      When I saw this screenshot, my jaw dropped.  I can't wait (despite the fact that these are pre-production shots).

  • http://twitter.com/KagakuGakusei Kara

    This looks gorgeous, and sounds good too. I think this makes a good argument that you don't need hyper realistic graphics, just well done graphics.

  • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

    Paging Nintendo... Paging Nintendo... The iPhone is kicking your ass right now...

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5FLRQI2X2LU3IHMCG7HEAEFD5I Cat Astrophy

      Everyone pretty much is. Software draught. One and soon to be two largely failed hardware launches...

  • Anonymous

    That one picture is better than any Zelda game released in the past 10 years.

    • http://openid.khron.net/ KHRoN

      Will animations and world/monsters design be on pair with this screenshot with some nice textures and ugly artefacts between mist and tree leaves? :)

    • Anonymous

      You see, this is exactly my point..

      Read below and you'll understand

  • http://openid.khron.net/ KHRoN

    Zelda is far more than eye-candy graphics. It's also a bit of story, creative use of weapons you can find in dungeons and a lot of hard work getting game itself perfect. I wonder if say models and animations will be on pair with textures used on presented screenshot...

  • Anonymous

    You people seriously need to stop comparing this to zelda and play zelda again to understand why zelda is that good! 

    Zelda games are made with a fairly large team and have a very long development time with an avarage of 3-5 years. That means they take their time to build the most polished, innovative and fun product they can. That is why zelda games are THAT good. I'm not even talking about the unforgettable score wich is also why zelda is all about.Sigh..

    I don't want to spoil your excitement guys but let me tell you this. This isn't going to be on pair and certainly not better then any zelda game that has ever been released. If they even want to come a little bit close to the production values of zelda they would have to aim for at least 2013. It simply takes a lot of time to build such games. 

    Did I mentioned innovation and a good original story plot too? So far it lacks both of them. Cloning wind waker's plot doesn't help. They are no better then what gameloft does imho. 

    The screenshot is very nice but this just proves how incredibly shallow most people are. New zelda? Sure :)

    • http://twitter.com/michaelklopf Michael Klopf

      Nevertheless, since many people decided the question N64 or PlayStation with Playstation, I know a lot of people which played A Link to the Past as their last Zelda game. That's why many long for a game like Oceanhorn, to play a decent looking Zelda game again, without the overhead of getting a new Nintendo console.

      At least it's my motivation.

    • Patrick Sullivan

      PH and ST weren't anywhere near as good as the other zelda games with an equally large team. Just because it's smaller (which is probably isn't) doesn't mean it's going to be worse. This could actually be a very solid and entertaining game.

    • Anonymous

      Why are you making all these assumptions about the final game when all you have is a piece of concept art?

    • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

      True, but... when's the last time you had to defend Zelda? That says alot about Nintendo's recent drought of premier titles. This is (likely) going to be a $10-15 game for iPhone, iPod and iPad, which has an install base of about 250 million...that's 100MM more than the DS (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars).

      No one thinks graphics are everything (to wit, the top selling franchise, Angry Birds, has crappy graphics), but a few clues about the gameplay in this screenshot (items, hearts, basically Zelda-like adventure game) is rightfully getting people very excited.

  • http://www.joomla-web-developer.com Joomla Development

    Awesome post! Keep up the excellent quality writing, it's uncommon to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.

  • Agent Strahm

    Lmao if this was made by Gameloft the hatred would be very intense. I dont get you people:/

    • Anonymous

      That's what I'm saying..

      They aren't doing anything new and it's just another blatenly rip-off from zelda. Insipred? How about litteraly taken in this case.

      Even gameloft showed more effort in their copies to make it different from the originals but this is just 1 on 1.

      • http://twitter.com/VULTR3 Mike

        If you use your eyes, you can see it looks different. The art style, the controls... Don't be a schmuck hahaha

      • Alex

        I'd like to hear some of your game ideas and game designs please.

    • Alex

      I don't think so.  Look at Sacred Odyssey.  That is clearly a ocarina wannabe and falls far short (though entertaining enough with it youtube video jokes).  This game looks great any way you put it, regardless of their inspiration.

    • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

      Didn't they do Final F... er.. Last Illusion... or Terminal Dreams, or .. what was it called?? 

      Oh yeah... Eternal Legacy.That's why people would laugh.

  • Anonymous

    The image is called Oceanhorn-IPhone4S-bullshot-small.jpg which was quite a blunder -- "bullshotting" in the industry means "constructed screenshot" that's been Photoshopped to look better than the game actually does. Screencapture was probably taken from PC and modified afterwards. The 'depth fog' -effect, for example, is fake and can be seen from sharp cut lines around the trees. The user interface is probably just added later in the picture. Soft shadows are quite certainly fake as well.

  • http://twitter.com/tweetDAVEtweet Dave

    Looks nice, but the virtual control pad will probably be a deal-breaker for me. I haven't yet played a game that uses one that I've been able to play for more than a few minutes, before getting frustrated and giving up.

    • http://twitter.com/VULTR3 Mike

      Waaahhh, Dave is so frustrated, he's not playing in the sandbox anymore. Give that man a wowipop.

    • Alex

      Well you better get on board and stop complaining, because it isn't going away.

    • Pat Barbu

      Maybe they will listen to this and do one like rocketcat games did with Mage gauntlet.

  • http://twitter.com/einztrigger einztrigger

    There's already Zelda rip off game on app store called Zanda : 
    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zanda-linked-swords/id463235140?mt=8

    Which is pretty suck ass

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001685356231 Peter Vang

    how come i cant find it in app store on my ipod touch??

  • http://www.appleiphone5deals.co.uk/ justin lamber

    we need the game for apple iphone 5 handset...

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001931797699 Nathaniel Ward

    i cant find it
     

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001931797699 Nathaniel Ward

    i cant find this game


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