Hell's Aquarium Thread

I presented an idea as a joke on Jacksepticeye's playthrough of Subnautica a while ago suggesting a concept for a game; one that takes place in the deep, prehistoric seas of ages past where you get to swim and try to survive in the same waters as Tylosaurus, Dunkleosteus, and Megalodon. Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response on that one comment alone, I decided to take the joke seriously and attempt to make a survival game under that premise.

Hell's Aquarium will be a survival game that takes place in a prehistoric ocean. The player is part of an experimental expedition involving time travel who is travelling back in time in order to study prehistoric fauna as well as to test his time travelling equipment that he has on hand. However during launch something goes wrong, and rather than be sent back in time he is instead launched into an alternate reality where the seas of the world's prehistoric past have all combined into one mega-ocean. Your task is to survive; survive and find your way back home.

Essentially you swim around in an ocean that has at least one biome from each of the geological time periods of the fossil record, starting with the Cambrian and going onward towards the Cretaceous and the time of the Mammals as well. Each biome is unique and has various different species available to observe, hunt, or evade. Unlike games like Subnautica and Stranded: Deep the animals interact with each other on a visible level; predators like Dunkleosteus actively hunt smaller fish like Eastmanosteus, who in turn hunt smaller animals and so on. Each species also has specific hunting strategies ranging from ambush hunting (Pterygotus) to active pursuit (Hybodus) to scavenging (Eurypterus).

Of course, your primary task is to get back home. Due to the strangeness of this weird world you aren't the only modern visitor to this weird world. Wrecks of old ships, crashed airplanes, and ghost ships dot the landscape providing you with different materials that you can harvest and repurpose in the remnants of your time machine. With all the latest technology of the 21st century at your disposal survival won't be impossible, but the deeper you go into the oceans the more dangerous things get.

Currently I am attempting to learn Blender so that I can begin making models and animation for the initial game. This is going to be a very big project that will take quite a bit of time to make a reality, but I am determined to make it possible. This game will be made using Unity (given that Subnautica uses Unity I would like to use a program that I know works with what I want) and will have a more-or-less realistic appearance to it depending on how the initial model designs turn out, we will have to see.

Let me know what you guys think! Also, if there's any specific type of prehistoric creature you'd like to see in the game, let me know. I'm going to try to get as many as I can in the final game though that all depends upon the demand.

-Kerian

I like the concept Keiran. I've mulled over the notion of an ancient evolution game a few times. You are obviously taking it more seriously.

I would like to see:

A) Nautilis, our great, great, 10^n+1 ancestor - the original who's your daddy?

B) The Horseshoe Crab: I think ( ?? ) it belongs in every time period, though probably on the seabed pretending to be a rock.

Good luck with your devs,

Richard / 'EtherFlows'

@etherflows1