Hypoxia

48 Hours

Timeline

Language

Unity

Engine

Team Size

Design

Contributions

Dive into the crushing depths of a pitch-black cave network in this tense underwater survival game. Chase oxygen bubbles to stay alive, navigate by the fading light of your glow stick, and scour the ocean floor for lost secrets. Don't get lost.

Project

Created for Global Game Jam 2025 under the theme "Bubbles", Hypoxia is a tense cave-diving survival game developed by a tight-knit team of two programmers and one designer. The player is tasked with navigating an increasingly claustrophobic underwater network to discover a sunken wreck. Oxygen acts as a constant ticking clock; players must desperately seek out air bubbles to survive while harvesting submerged treasures to upgrade their O2 tank capacity, movement speed, and the lifetime of their only real tool: the glow stick.

Initially, the glow stick was designed simply as a breadcrumb mechanic to help players remain orientated in the maze-like caves. However, during development, we realised that tying the game's core tension to the lighting system drastically improved the atmosphere and game feel.

We significantly reduced the ambient light, especially at lower depths, making the player entirely reliant on their glow sticks as the oppression of the cave grows. To heighten this tension, we made the collectable treasures emit light as well. This created a compelling, emergent risk-reward scenario: players are forced to choose whether to harvest the luminescent treasures to fund their crucial upgrades, or leave them behind to act as vital, glowing landmarks in the pitch black.

My Role

Progression Balance and Level Layout: I designed and mapped out the entire cave network, pacing the environmental difficulty to ensure players started out in the relatively safe shallows before being pushed into increasingly dark, claustrophobic depths. Alongside the spatial layout, I balanced the upgrade economy, specifically tuning treasure placement, reward yields, and upgrade costs to ensure a satisfying progression curve that maintained the game's tension.
Rapid Prototyping & Task Pipeline: With only 48 hours to deliver a playable build, I managed the task pipeline for our two programmers. I prioritised the development of core survival system of oxygen depletion and bubble's, and clearly delineated their coding tasks. This strict delegation prevented overlapping work and merge conflicts, ensuring our limited time was spent iterating on functional mechanics.

Tools Used

Trello, Unity, Visual Studio