Curse is a Half-Life 2 total-conversion mod in which you wander through a house of mummies (among other nasties) and fend them off, all the while solving puzzles. You use analogue controls via the mouse to smack them around with a spiky morning star using your own thrusting style. As New Enthusiast has previously reported, the mod features some surprisingly polished yet creepy theme music, not to mention the sheer attention to detail in both level and character design. And it's all created, in large, by one developer – Gabor Dosa.
It's being produced in the form of episodes, and as of today, the first episode is imminently due for release. It's expected to hit FilePlanet first, and although an unpopular choice, the developer has stuck to its guns on this matter.
GI.Biz writes: "With the rise of World of Warcraft came an increase in the popularity of tools which enabled gamers to customise their own experiences - generally known as add-ons. Such modifications sprang up for all kinds of in-game activity, from combat to exploration, and such has been the popularity of some add-ons that Blizzard has incorporated solutions of its own into the default user interface.
One site to spot the trend early on and offer a platform for gamers to centralise their add-on requirements was Curse - originally a guild website which developed into a fan destination, before the company began to capitalise on its audience and expand its operations.
Since 2007 the company has raised USD 11 million in two rounds of funding, and branched out into other games and other sites. Here the CEO of Curse Inc, Hubert Thieblot, talks about the company's journey, how a passion can become a profitable business, and why he's looking forward to the rise of console MMOs."
Resolution Magazine reviews the first episode of Half-Life 2 total conversion Curse.
From the article: "It is, in almost every way, a professional-quality release, with only the most minuscule of balancing issues (and, of course, its length) to overtly separate it from the commercial crowd. Play it to absolute completion and it'll entertain you for a good afternoon, and the cliffhanger conclusion's strong enough to make waiting for the next episode seem like an impossible task. Let's hope part two builds on the quality of this opening. If it does, it could be a very special series indeed."
Curse is a rather curious first-person horror game based around physics puzzles. Like all too many titles today, it features the living undead, but instead of jumping aboard the current zombie bandwagon, it's set in an Egyptian necropolis that's swarming with mummies and other pyramidal nightmares.
As you might expect, you need to lay waste to these abominations, and one of Curse's more interesting aspects is how the mod handles combat. You'll wield a rather menacing-looking morning star, but rather than click the mouse button and cycle through maybe several set animations of thwacking, it's an entirely analogue system.