Preview: Hydrophobia

In the persistent drizzle of a grey September afternoon I set sail for Manchester. I was going to see one of the few remaining developers in the North West of England; to get a look at their upcoming game – Hydrophobia – and to see some of the technology behind it.

I had heard some vague information about Hydrophobia over the past year or two but it amounted to very little. I knew that it was a third-person action game which involved combat and climbing. I knew that it had a special new game engine which allows for dynamic water. I was entirely unprepared for just how impressive it would be, or what this game’s legacy could be.

Hydrophobia takes clear cues from other games in the action genre. It has gun combat, some platforming, a robust cover system, light puzzling and plenty of climbing. You could be forgiven for thinking that it all sounds very Uncharted. When you realise that the protagonist (Kate Wilson) is female, you might immediately think of Tomb Raider. Whilst there are legitimate parallels to be drawn, Kate has a little bit more about her than every pubescent male gamer’s favourite poster girl. Kate has depth in a way that the often superhuman Ms. Croft never did.

The game is set thirty years in the future and starts with Kate in her apartment on board The Queen of the World, a huge floating city with an interesting story behind it. A story which, like much of the narrative in Hydrophobia, is based around near-future tech and real – if a little “worst case scenario” – socio-political possibilities. After a little bit of scene- and character- setting things turn bad quite quickly (via the, now ubiquitous, terrorist attack) and the game is properly underway.

At this point, the previously resplendent city-ship begins to sink and Kate must face her fear of water in an effort to survive the attack and, we assume, save the day. The game becomes an untiring assault on your senses, with gas leaks, broken electric cables and regular explosions all adding to the disorienting effect of corridors and rooms filled with sloshing water.

So, let’s talk about that water: the HydroEngine is capable of dynamically generating water. That doesn’t sound like much when you say it out loud. In truth it’s quite a remarkable achievement. To measure just how remarkable it is why not try to cast your mind back to the last game you played with flowing water that reacted to your movements and the constraints and forces of the environment? It’s not easy is it? In fact, it’s impossible because it has never been done before.

Sure, there have been scripted sections with pre-rendered water following a cleverly-plotted animation. There has even been water to wade through, dive into, patter through and leave wet footprints with but nothing like this.

HydroEngine makes water that behaves like water and it does it on the fly. No canned animations to make pretty ripples on the surface here, the ripples are visible because of the way the light falls on the real-time, reactionary surface of the water. So the ripples, as much as they ever can be in a digital construct, are real. You create ripples by wading through the water. And they look like real ripples because they are real ripples. The game launches on the Xbox 360 on 29th September (they’re not ruling out other platforms at some point in the future) and from that point forward every water effect in every subsequent game will be measured against what the HydroEngine puts out.

Hydrophobia’s water is always going to be the major talking point. It’s the most instantly apparent “unique selling point” in the game but it’s not the only bit of impressive tech at work. Spare a thought for the equally impressive but less immediately noticeable Infinite Worlds game creation tool kit.

The Infinite Worlds system allows for real-time editing, population and testing of the game-world. I saw it demoed over the course of about twenty-five minutes as a level consisting of two long corridors and three side-rooms was built from scratch. The level was being built on a PC which sent that data to the central hub where it was relayed, in real-time, back to the Xbox 360 which was showing the edits as if you were inside the level.

So a level can be worked on and explored at exactly the same time. Not only that, several people can all be working on the same level at once. Half way through my demonstration, one of the artists started playing about with the lighting in the same level from a completely different office and that was visible via the Xbox 360’s TV connection too. I was amazed at how fast the process was, which made it all the more amusing when the designer apologised for it taking so long. This was a decently sized, playable (I did) section of fully populated game-space with AI and lighting effects. In twenty-five minutes.

It is a serendipitous side effect of the way the creation tools and the game engine work that makes the memory footprint small enough that the whole game – a fully 3D action game – is held in memory at all times. That means no load times between areas or levels, no pauses before cut-scenes and less than a two second wait between dying and restarting from your last checkpoint. It also means that the file size for the game is around one gigabyte. That’s an impossibly small file size for such a full-feeling game, and well beneath Microsoft’s size limit for XBLA games. So what we’ve ended up with is a game which should be expected to grace a full, disc-based retail release but it’s on the Xbox Live Arcade for 1200MSP (approx £10/€15/$15).

You can forget about that “episodic” mantle that you may have heard too. Hydrophobia is set to be the first episode in a trilogy of full game experiences. Quoted at around seven hours long, this is not a bite-size episode with more to follow on a tight, regular schedule. This is episode one in the same sense that The Phantom Menace is an episode in the modern Star Wars trilogy (except without Jar Jar Binks, thankfully). The second episode is already well into development (and the storyline is written for the whole trilogy) but there is no firm release schedule as yet.

Ultimately, Hydrophobia is a result of the years of hard work that have gone into the Infinite Worlds tool set (which is still growing in extremely promising directions) and the HydroEngine. On a technical level it is very impressive but Hydrophobia also has heart, atmosphere and character.

This mid-sized, independently-minded studio have managed to put several pieces of seriously impressive technology, born out of the sort of revolutionary thinking that used to be the trademark of the British development studios, into a game that any major studio would envy. And then they want to sell it for a quarter of what it might make in a retail box. There doesn’t seem to be any way that Hydrophobia, as a value proposition, can fail.

Update: In response to one or two comments about seeing the water in motion, we’ve made this video to show you a little bit.

35 Comments

  1. 100% agree – I saw this briefly at Gamescom and the way the water moves is absolutely amazing.

    • I wasn’t prepared for just how impressive it was going to be. There are a few things going on at DED that are a little bit amazing.

    • This looks great I am so buying the first episode when it arrives on xbla the 29th.

      And after watching the preview on inside xbox my mind is made up I am so getting it.

  2. It’s a very good game. I happen to know the devs! In fact some of them are coming round my house tomorrow!

  3. Not ruling out other platforms? They confirmed a PS3 version age back – http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/04/27/hydrophobia-heading-to-ps3/

    • It’s timed exclusivity I believe.

    • Thank god for that, this game looks amazing and I had it in my head that it had already been confirmed as PS3 bound – but when the preview seemed to be a little more wooly about it I was beginning to worry I had dreamt it!

  4. Argh, so it’s not PS3, then…

  5. I hope it does come to Playstation… I really feel like I’m missing out, it sounds/looks really cool

  6. hope this comes to ps3 it looks awesome

  7. When i first heard about this game i thought the all that water physics meant the game would be built around trying to negotiate the environment by using the water in a natural/realistic way but in a recent video i saw the character raise up columns of water to use as a weapon and i thought that kind of clashed. I’ve only seen a short clip so i’ll keep an eye on how it develops.

    • Through this first game the combat seems to be all about using the environment to kill and flooding/draining areas by opening doors or shooting out windows but there is a little bonus unlock on completion that you’ve obviously seen video of ;)

      • Ah, in that case my interest is piqued again :)

  8. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any way that Hydrophobia, as a value proposition, can fail.’

    No one buys it :P

  9. Was an absolute pleasure to have you over, we had a great time showing everything off and what a brilliant article! To answer a few questions in the comments:

    – Yes it’s a timed exclusive and will come to PSN, we just can’t say when for contractual reasons

    – The ‘water powers’ where you control the column of water is indeed a bonus challenge room unlocked when you complete the main campaign

    – yobrenoops I’m bring Move with me tomorrow, did you get one yet?

    • Yay! Well not yay really, boo to timed exclusives, but yay its coming to PS3.

    • No I’ve not yet I’ve got to wait for gashball payday and then I’ll be dual move single navcon’d up.

      Wait till you see the challenges/comps we’re having tomorrow. Mind=blow.

  10. I’d like to share a little source of multiple lol’s which is currently spreading around the Dark Energy office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs

    • Epic fail :)

    • Brilliant!

      • Lol you made my day “uh oh”
        Hilarious must have took you forever to build that house.

    • Haha that poor guy. He’s just stunned by what happens.

    • That’s proper quality! Funny. as. hell.

    • That made me giggle :D

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