Hypoxia

Don't lose your breath

Hypoxia is a deep sea horror game where the player finds them self alone in a deep sea research base, unable to contact the surface as the communications have been knocked out. The players job is to fix the communication systems and get back to the surface. They player sits in the bridge/main control room which shows the state of each room. Either light, medium or heavy damage as shown by the colour of the room. If a room is breached, there is a high chance a monster will be there, and the player should be cautious because if the room is not locked down in time, the monster will escape and roam free around the base. The aim of the game is to survive for 2 weeks until a rescue team arrives, however as each day passes, more rooms get compromised meaning the player will have to decide whether to lock the room down which is safer but uses precious power, or seal it which costs less power, but uses precious recourses and puts the player at risk.

Hypoxia is a survival horror game, with strong elements of strategy and some micromanaging to evade monsters and ultimately return to the surface

The target audience for Hypoxia is Teens and Adults. This is due to the nature of the game being unsuitable for children as there will be blood and gore elements, as well as a dark environment and unexpected attacks from enemies which would be too frightening for a younger audience.

The player will keep an eye on the damage status of each room, which can be either light, medium or heavy damage. If the room gets breached they have to decide whether to seal the room using precious resources collected around the base, or to lock down the room which uses power but is more secure than sealing. When a room is locked down, the adjacent room is also locked down which could shut off important resources and potentially life saving items so it is up to the player to decide what they do. It is beneficial to the player to explore the rooms early on and get as much resources and items as possible such as a torch, batteries, a taser etc. so that they are ready for the later stages of the game when more and more rooms become breached. The game gets increasingly more difficult as the days go on and more rooms are breached because the player has to use more resources and/or power to keep the monsters away, and if they failed to prepare properly the monsters will roam around the base, making it harder for the player to evade them. If the player manages to survive 2 weeks at the research base, the security systems will boot online allowing them to contact the surface and send an SOS to be rescued. After completing the game, an endless mode is unlocked which allows the player to disregard sending an SOS to the surface, and continue playing to see how many days they can survive.

The game will have detailed models and look polished/up to date to todays standards of graphics. The monsters will look unique and terrifying, leaving a lasting impression on the player. The environment will be dim, and in some places very dark creating an eerie feeling. Lights will flicker, giving a sense of being in danger, and there will be not much sound as there is nobody in the facility, creating a sense of isolation. When the monsters start to breach the rooms, they will make lots of noise, making the player feel trapped and helpless as they have to use there limited resources to try and keep them away. The controls will also be optimised to feel smooth and intuitive, creating less of a distraction for the player and allowing them to be immersed in the gameplay.

the general gameplay will be that of resource-management and survival-horror, the player is given the task of surviving until the communications has been fixed, the main gameplay loop is trying to keep monsters out, this is done through a computer that shows the current state of rooms, and how compromised they are, the player can counter this by either sealing the room, which can be done remotely, but seals off multiple rooms, and costs precious power, or you can barricade the room, which costs resources, but you have to be in/near the room that the monster is in, putting the player at risk. When a monster breaks into the base, the game becomes more of a traditional horror game (think outlast, amnesia) where the player has to try and avoid the monster, the player can also fight off the monsters with crafted weapons with limited use as a last-ditch effort to not die. The player can also choose which areas have lights, to add to resource management and risk/reward, as less lights allow for more control of the facility, but for more difficulty when creatures break in, as it restricts visibility

Story

A large portion of the story takes place before the gameplay, with the world suffering from an undisclosed catastrophic event that caused almost the entire populace to be wiped out instantly. The few who survived slowly starved and withered away, but you play in the shoes of somebody safe from the destruction in his underwater bunker. You found yourself in this situation after you were employed by the US Department of Defence to research into advancing underwater warfare. Due to the importance of your initial mission, your bunker is fitted with enough resources to last at least another decade, with the means to grow crops and sustain life. However, you wake up to red lights flashing overhead and an annoying buzzer piercing your eardrums and quickly notice that all of the monitors are displaying one of the wings as missing. Whatever caused the apocalypse is currently trying to board your vessel.

The game takes place entirely on your underwater bunker, with the only glimpses of the world at large being from occasional news broadcasts and delayed radio signals. You can also use the windows on the bunker to see somewhat outside, but the lights only penetrate so far into the ocean. Because of this, the game is designed to feel very claustrophobic, adding to the horror of the situation, as there is literally no escape. Your only choice is to use everything at your disposal on the bunker to protect it and eventually make it completely safe and habitable. 

The map of the bunker is purposefully circular to make the player feel delirious as they feel like they are making no progress, running around in a vicious cycle. It also serves to make everything easily (and quickly) accessible at all times, as at later stages in the game there will be a lot of things to micro manage at once.

 

(Note, the Escape Pod wing is broken off from the very start of the game.)

The world in general should feel unsafe, as you are quite literally surrounded by creatures, of which you have no idea how to fight or control. The bunker itself is designed in a symmetrical, circular fashion to make the player feel like they are never progressing and simply running in a vicious, pointless cycle. This also serves to make everything quickly and easily accessible as this is necessary for high pressure micro management later in the game. The bunker is predominantly split off into 6 wings (one of which is destroyed from the start of the game, the escape pods, just to emphasise how there is no escape from the situation) all of which are vital to the players success and the story and feel of the world. The wings are the furthest apart from their opposite-purpose wings to make it so the player has to choose their activities carefully as it takes a long time to run to the other wing.

On a smaller scale, the inside of the bunker is high tech because of the nature of the original mission. However, over time it has become rusty and frequently covered in moss, to make the bunker feel unsafe and rearing to collapse at any moment.

The bunker is made up of 7 main areas, the 5 available wings, the main control room and the hallways. 

The Main Control Room

The main control room is the room in which the player originally spawns, and is at the centre of the entire map, making it easy to visit from all locations at all times. The main control room houses monitors that will occasionally display news broadcasts providing backstory to the game, and a radio which will sometimes pick up old broadcasts which will provide more detail on the lore. It also has statistics for how well the rest of the ship is doing in terms of integrity, supplies, lighting, oxygen etc. The main control room also has door and window control which allows the player to forcefully lock a door or window, preventing a section of the ship from being crossed (either permanently or temporarily) or a window to be used (as windows are weak points of the ship).

The Hallways

The hallways are the long rooms that connect the wings and the main control room, there is also a ring of hallways on the outer edge of the ship for faster travelling between wings. The hallways also have windows spread across them for looking out into the ocean to view the location of the creatures and for creatures to potentially break in.

Living Quarters 

Living Quarters is where the player can write in their journal to remember things about the creatures (or the bunkers supplies) and to sleep/relax. If the player sleeps while the ship is not in a safe state, however, they may never wake up. The living quarters is the only room that can be temporarily locked from inside (aside from the main control room) in order to sleep and reset player energy.

Escape Pods

The escape pods are the only wing that is never accessible by the player, as it is destroyed as soon as the player initially wakes up. They are also not displayed on any of the statistics panes in the main control room. The main purpose of the escape pods is as a story device to emphasise the futility of trying to escape the creatures.

Food Supply

The food supply is where all of the food and crops are stored. When the player needs to eat, in order to regain health and energy without sleeping, they can visit the food supply in order to do so. Food is limited however, and they can also use the crops in the food supply to grow more food in the laboratory.

Navigation

Navigation displays the current depth and co-ordinates of the bunker, as well as any nearby entities (creatures that are out of window viewing distance. Navigation can also be used to permanently shut off a window, but this action is irreversible. If the lights in navigation lose power, so will the statistics displays and window controls. 

Laboratory

The laboratory is mainly for growing sustainable food and repairing equipment. You can also pick up materials from the laboratory in order to patch up broken walls and windows. However, if the lights go out in the laboratory you will no longer be able to grow food and all current growth will be paused and slowly decay. 

Communications

Communications is where you may attempt to use a radio to reach other survivors, or send a loud blast wave around the ship to temporarily shock and stun all nearby creatures - but this should be a last resort as it uses a huge amount of power. Both of these activities are only useable while communications has power and have varying levels of success. The more you use the shock effect on the creatures, the more they adapt to it and the less if affects them, until eventually it has no effect anymore.

The main characters in Hypoxia are the player character and the antagonistic creatures.

The Main Character

The main character, who is named by the player, is the protagonist of Hypoxia and the entire game is viewed from his/her perspective. The only times the player can catch glimpses of what the main character looks like is through old images lying around and very faint reflections in windows. The main character also never speaks, and instead only every communicates through text or heavy breathing/grunting. The idea of a mute character allows for us to emphasise the feeling of isolation on the bunker, and it also makes it easier for the player to empathise with him/her as they can insert their own voices for the internal monologue. The main character is average height, muscular and has a lot of stamina due to previous training in the navy, but is a perfectly normal human.

The backstory of the main character is purposefully left mostly in the dark, with the only direct references coming from clues scattered around the game. From these we can debunk that he used to server in the navy and came on this mission to study the advancing threat of aquatic warfare. He also has a wife and 2 children, or did have before the catastrophe.

The Creatures

The creatures, or the monsters, or the bad guys, are the antagonists of hypoxia and spend the entire game, after presumably wiping out most of humanity, trying to break into the ship and kill the main character. They are not exceptionally strong on their own, and would likely be killed with somewhat ease one on one, but they have strength in numbers. At any time there can be upwards of 200 creatures circling the bunker and trying to breach it.

The visuals of the creatures are left largely up to the player's imagination, as they are left as black, smoky entities in the game. They also have piercing red eyes and move significantly faster than the player character. They are weak to electric shocks, which you can administer via the area shock from communications. 

Nothing is known about the creatures' origin, or their motives.

Hypoxia does not have a cut and dry level-based system, instead the game progressively increases in difficulty as the ship gets destroyed and decays, and there are certain breakpoints in this sliding difficulty that could be considered 'levels'. 

The remaining energy can be used as a good indicator to tell how difficult the game currently is;

if you are at 50% or lower energy, you lose complete access to the area shock, which means there is virtually nothing, aside from your own ability to manually patch breaches and lock doors, to prevent the creatures from breaking into the bunker.

if you are at 25% or less energy, you lose the ability to seal doors and power all 6 rooms at once. Your statistics panels will also sometimes glitch out and display incorrect information.

You can also use the state of the ship to dictate the current 'level' of the game, as eventually complete wings of the bunker will become broken off and completely open.

Finally, the level can be related to the status of the creatures. As you approach the endgame it is virtually impossible to prevent at least 1 of the creatures from breaching into the bunker. In which case, the game becomes much more survival oriented than micro-management.