Mountain is a Nature Simulation game for desktop & iOS.
It uses drawings to generate a unique Mountain & surrounding ecosystem, floating in space. There are no advertised controls or objectives. Cosmic events occur over long stretches of time, hours, months and years.
Mountain recreates the basic processes of Nature - weather, the passing of seasons, growth and death, the sun rising and setting, the sound of the wind.
Every Mountain performs this simulation differently.
One Year
Each Mountain also generates thoughts about itself and its circumstances.
The nature of these thoughts change throughout its life.
Mountain contains many secrets and is the subject of several guides which you can find here.
“Nothing You Do Matters in This Game, But You’ll Still Obsess Over It.”
I first presented Mountain at MOCA Los Angeles in 2014, and it was launched on iOS shortly thereafter.
At launch, it was the App store’s #1 RPG in 33 countries.
Selected press from launch: The Atlantic - WIRED - The Verge - LA Times.
Mountain was the first of its kind - an ambient game - designed to live in the background. It was based around Nature Simulation, and it has the ability to play automatically. It inspired outrage and debate around the subject of art and games. On the main Mountain discussion forum, there is a thread debating this with over 1300 comments.
Mountain still has very divided scores on the App store, but many amazing reviews on Steam.
Mountain was nominated for the Games For Change award @ The Game Awards and featured in many end of year lists.
With no paid promotion, Mountain sold over 1 million copies across platforms and been exhibited around the world. More than half of Mountain’s audience is in China
Mountain at Fukuoka Airport!
A massive steel Mountain installation opened at Fukuoka airport, Japan, on February 9th 2020.
This show was unfortunately cut short by the pandemic.
2.0 Update
Mountain recieved a significant, free update - released in December 2018.
Every single system was improved, as well as every shader, particle effect, texture and model. It was in fact more work than making the original.
Main updates
+ Different Mountain Types with unique flora
+ Improved Mountain shapes & appearance
+ HDR rendering, new color correction & post fx system
+ New cloud system and revamped environmental effects
+ Improvements and optimizations to all shaders
+ Re-written procedural flora systems, will produce more trees and plants with better arrangement
+ More tree and plant varieties added, with improved leaf, plant & tree dynamic effects
+ Addition of dynamic birds & butterflies
+ More artifacts
+ Music keyboard added to UI
+ Slow Motion mode
+ MIDI Control is now possible and works with any midi input device
+ More Secret modes to discover and improved old ones
I made these gifs to promote Mountain on Tumblr in 2014
This control-free Mountain Arcade machine was presented at Fantasic Arcade in 2015, it is now lost in Time.
Historical notes
Mountain is not released on Android in any official capacity. A rather buggy was available for a short time.
Mountain recieved an update in October 2017 - which included support for Chinese and Japanese, as well as the addition of an Apple TV version.
In 2020, The Double Fine Presents label dissolved and David OReilly became the sole publisher of Mountain.
