Another Action Platformer, Ark of Sinners, Is Headed To WiiWare

By Ishaan . April 3, 2011 . 4:29pm

Ark of Sinners is an action-platformer being developed by independent developer, Anima Game Studio, starring a protagonist named Celia. While we don’t know much about the game so far, here’s a look at some screenshots of a work-in-progress build:

 


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  • shion16

    woah……….looks good
    a little bit like castlevania but thats not bad

  • eilegz

    looks kinda old school not bad, if they pull out a clasic game with a wiimote lets hope they use or let to use a nunchaku setting like muramasa

  • Urgh… I’ve only heard bad things about having to deal with WiiWare, i.e. actually putting games on WiiWare (mostly the 40MB size limit).

    • lostinblue

      Limitations are not always a bad thing. Ocarina of Time was made on 32 MB, Chrono Trigger on a 4 MB ROM, and we could go on.

      Often times limitations can make developers actually focus on what’s really important and leave the “crap” out, I’d say some currently famous developers really need that.

      That said, yes, 40 MB is kinda small, they ought to have doubled it to 80 MB or so during the service’s lifetime (like “keep trying to put it on 40 MB, but providing you fail we’re not nuking it’s release or make you axe it until you’re not satisfied with it)

      • Except this is 2011.

        • So what that means they need extra space for worthless cgi cutscenes or maybe a lot of horrible english voice acting. Game developers that are actually great could make a master piece on the Atari 2600 right now. Instead now there are more average developers using other people engines, and game ideas. To still only come up with above average games.

          • “Game developers that are actually great could make a master piece on the Atari 2600 right now.”

            I’m sure Shigeru Miyamoto, Markus “Notch” Persson, and Gabe Newell all could, except that they realize the year is 2011 and that technology has advanced beyond 80s hardware. PROTIP: None of their games are graphically advance.

          • Suicunesol

            That’s because they remember what they’re supposed to be making–games. Not interactive CGI films.

            I think it’s nice to still have a major company that puts the game over the graphics.

      • Tell that to the makers of Super Meat Boy.

        • sfried

          And tell Team Meat to learn a little bit from ShinEn.

          • If you heard Team Meat’s explanation on why WiiWare is garbage, you’d understand their stance. Basically, Super Meat Boy wouldn’t be fun, at all, if dumbed down to fit a 40MB limit.

          • puchinri

            That probably goes for Super Meat Boy, but it’s not as if people haven’t made fun games for WiiWare (people like ShinEn).

      • malek86

        “Limitations are not always a bad thing. Ocarina of Time was made on 32 MB, Chrono Trigger on a 4 MB ROM, and we could go on.”

        That’s the wrong perspective. Yeah, those games are small size today, but at the time the cartridges were enough. They weren’t really “limited” at the time.

        A better comparison is: would Miyamoto have been able to make Ocarina of Time if he was asked to do it on a 1MB cartridge? Yes, sure, but the presentation definitely wouldn’t have been nearly as good. That’s the problem with Wiiware: today, it’s just not enough.

        • lostinblue

          Well, If Ocarina of Time was made “as is” today, it would take far less than 32 MB seeing back then textures weren’t compressed; today with S3TC you can make 32 MB of textures take as little as 4 MB… and most of any game’s data is textures.

          Xbox Live Arcade started off with 50 MB, as pointed out (and now sits at 250 MB, if I recall correctly); but note that 50 MB for a HD platform is way more limited than 40 MB for a SD one is, most of the data they have to accommodate is textures and those have to be way beefier than the ones on a SD console (often times we’re talking about textures with 4 times the resolution). And yes they still got submissions, not in 2011 but 2007/2008 or so.

          I’m not defending 40 MB, mind you; I’m saying it’s the premise of the service; putting a game onto 40 MB or… well put it on retail. Stuff like what shinen pulled can be impressing due to the fact it takes up 40 MB’s and stuff like chrono trigger and ocarina of time (that I pointed out) are simply not gonna get made for it because if you’re making something epic in 2011 you’re not even gonna glance onto a service like it, XBLA or PSN.

          My point being, Super Meat Boy guys should have dealt with some flexibility; “how many extra megabytes do you need to realize your vision for the game?” Nintendo should have thought of a safety net instead of saying “40 MB or no dice, those are the rules and we can’t bend them”… But having a limit and a palpable one at that was one of the basic premises of the service; what I am saying is that while they should know/realize that and be flexible for games that really deserved it, truth is those games started being made with 40 MB in mind because that’s the service premise.

          From then on their only fault was being inflexible/true to their premise. Premise wasn’t bad, even if we could discuss the results, being inflexible is.

          • malek86

            That’s what MS did, when they wanted to put SOTN on the service, they essentially “made an exception”. However, they noticed that everyone and their grandmas was whining about the size limit, so they just removed the previous one and made it 150MB. Again, not enough for some, so they made it 250MB. That should have been the final limit, but then some exceptions started coming out again (Portal for example was 600MB), at which point they just said “it’s not worth the trouble” and removed the limit permanently (there is still a 2GB max size because apparently that’s all the service can handle, though I wonder how true that is).

            So, it’s not a point of Nintendo imposing a limit and then arbitrarily making exceptions. In that case, why not just up the limit permanently? It’s not like you are doing developers any favors with a max size.

            Also because multiplatform is king today, and with games on PSN/XBLA being upwards of 1GB and more, having 40MB is too little even if the game is made with SD textures instead of HD ones. Of course developers will prefer those two platforms.

            Do they still have that problem with internal memory? That would be more understandable, but then, it makes you wonder if they couldn’t just make stuff run directly from SD.

          • lostinblue

            MS changed the premise of their service altogether, from a constrained one into one without (real) limitations, you could release a retail game for it with a little work, as we’re seeing with HD ports like Beyond Good and Evil and Soul Calibur. We can argue that flexibility was an advantage to them, sure… but what you make for the service was influenced by it. Just like staying limited no doubt had an influence on the kind of content Wiiware gets. Which is not so bad, there’s a few gems (more than on DSiware, for instance).

            They’re still limited with internal memory footprint, yeah. They won’t accept anything that would need a SD card to “fit”.

            I’d also suspect a lot of the problems have to do with the inner workings of the operating system itself; Wii’s system menu was quite a trainwreck from the original intent, channels never got faster/more optimized to boot, the ammount of internal memory proved to be on the thin side and new options/value in updating was never done.

            In fact, Wii system menu was developed by the Animal Crossing team we were told, and it seemed to be with it’s hands tied from the ground up. Nintendo needs a software interface team focusing only on the OS’s they use, and in implementing stuff on them/making them work. Hopefully that’ll happen/is happening on the 3DS.

          • malek86

            The 3DS seems much better to me already, although weirdly enough, the OS feels much slower than, say, the PSP. Even going into data management has a loading screen.

            Still, there’s clearly a lot more potential there. As long as they don’t screw up.

    • malek86

      It’s like the complete opposite of a Blu-ray.

      Even Microsoft didn’t take long to understand that their original 50MB limit for XBLA was completely ridiculous, and kept increasing it in the years. But maybe Nintendo doesn’t care about Wiiware that much (otherwise the service would be better).

      Well, let’s hope they cook something more decent with the 3DSware.

      • What’s holding games back from using Blu-ray discs (in their entirety) is multiplatform (360 and PS3) releases. If a game were say… PS3 exclusive or PS3 and PC… then yeah, the game would probably be massive.

    • puchinri

      Probably. But plenty of companies still work with it. And they make it work quite wonderfully at that. (If they absolutely needed more room and it was that much more of a problem, couldn’t they just develop for Xbox Live Arcade or PSN?)

  • idrawrobots

    I am surprised to see something halfway interesting coming to WiiWare at this point, but I will keep my eyes and ears peeled.

  • hmm i getting the weird castlevania vibe going on here

  • Guest

    Looks neat.

  • Suicunesol

    Seems interesting.

  • Zero_Destiny

    Oh man the Wii is a platforming machine. XD I love it. No other system has all these platformers on them. hehehehehe The game looks great. I’d have to see it in action before making any judgments but I like what we got so far. :)

    • puchinri

      Right? x’D
      I didn’t expect that of the Wii.
      It would be good to have some video, but it does look pretty cool so far.

    • Joanna

      haha, definitely. Awhile back someone asked if the Wii is worthwhile and I said yes if you like platformers. xD
      Now there is also a fair amount of RPGs too….if only we could see them state-side. :(

  • Looks solid but a bit bland. Hopefully that won’t be the case when the game is near completion.

    Would have liked it to be a metroidvania game though :D

  • gatotsu911

    Wow, that looks pretty good for a WiiWare game. Getting a strong Castlevania vibe from it, too. That said, I can’t comprehend why any developer in this day and age would want to put their game on WiiWare.

    • puchinri

      I’m guessing there would be some perk to it, but Wiiware does get quite a few nice and good looking games.

      • Not only that but platformers selling real well on the Wii and also being a huge genre on the system might of had something to do with it…or just a developer maybe not wanting to make a full HD game and to save some money up as well (just throwing it out there).

        • puchinri

          Oh, I agree entirely. Especially on the money part.

  • Icon

    Oh this looks cool. As others have mentioned, it does have a sort of Castlevania look to it, only with polygons. I like supporting indy developers. Hope it’s good, I’d like to get it.

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