Team Hexapus
Game project spring 2017
Antti Heikkinen, Samu Aaronen,
Oona Laakso, Helmi Pirinen, Ida Tuominen, Annika Aarnio
The Game
Thalassa is an atmospheric game where the player rides the underwater currents of an endless ocean in a speedy little submarine, weaving their way through dangerous waters, deeper and deeper into the abyss.
During the spring of 2017 our team, the Hexapus, developed a deep sea “Race the Sun” -like game with a submarine as the “player character”. The game has technically an endless cycle of atmospheric levels full of dangers ranging from dark caverns and falling obstacles to moody carnivous sea creatures.
The game is very stylized and almost minimalistic. There is no shooting or combat mechanics, but the player’s progress and skill is avarded with speed and shield boosts. The player is encouraged to race for the highest score by online and local scoreboard feature.
Development process
On the programming side the focus was on the shader effects and the underwater feel since it was very crucial for the atmosphere of the game to be just right. The art and design side concentrated to create simple, compact and functional audio visuals that would still remain clean and stylish.
When our group was formed we decided unanimously to have as small of a scope as possible for our game so that we could fully concentrate on making the final result clean, cool and fun without having to cut the corners.
In the end we still ended up with a bit of a time issue and learned the hard way that no matter how simple you try to make something, making it well will always eat your hours. We had to make big compromises with the theme and the mechanics to save time and the last few weeks were borderline hellish especially for the programmers. It seems to have been worth it; The game was released 14th of May 2017 to itch.io with a “Pay What You Want” option. It can be played on PC with either keypad or a controller. We are still looking into the possibility of a Mac release.
The game can be downloaded from here.