Recently I was given a chance to sit down and spend some time with Iocaine studio’s new self-described “action strategy” game ThreadSpace: Hyperbol. For the newly initiated, Iocaine studios is a young new group of developers hailing strait out of Irvine California (or Blizzard country if you will). Hyperbol, Iocaine’s first title, began development in spring of 2003 as an undergraduate school project by several computer science majors at the University of California at Irvine for a course in game development. Though the project for the school has since been completed, and several of the developers have finished their degrees, work on Hyperbol has continued steadily (minus some of the initial developers such as Jason Fader who went on to work for Blizzard Entertainment) and is now entering its later stages of completion.

What is ThreadSpace: Hyperbol exactly? Well if you want it in a nutshell I would call it a real-time strategy game combined with a game of pool (does that sound strange enough for you?). Games of Hyperbol are set in fairly small (you can generally see the whole arena at once if you zoom out a little bit) 3-d space arenas (kind of like a funky pool table). The players interactions are set up around a futuristic battle-tank (the white ball) with their goal being to destroy all of the other battle-tanks in the arena (with predictable variations on that mode to spice things up). This tank produces and places all interactive elements (the colored balls) which include weapons and defenses. There are over 20 different “projectiles” that the ship can use (both offensive and defensive) and all have some strongly unique effects and necessary methods of implementation onto the battlefield. Generally, the first object that the player creates is a “production station”. This is a separate hub (that itself can be destroyed) that regulates which weapons and defenses and the quantity of those weapons and defenses that you are able to deploy with your ship.

Upon the first few moments of playing Threadspace, some of the innovations and blendings it makes on and of existing genres are obvious. For one thing, the game is very clearly, in a lot of ways, a traditional RTS. The game is focused on building structures for the production of weapons as well as building obstacles and automated defenses for strategic control of the enemy’s offensive movements. In contrast, however, the game is quick to point out that there is a major tactical focus on your mobile “ship” from which all offensive and strategic elements are issued. This means far less reliance on “resources” and “territory” than your typical RTS. In fact, Hyperbol does away with “resources” all together (but still uses the element of build time). And since there is no technology tree, and no resource dependency, players can build any weapon within the first few minutes of the game. This means that matches can get a lot more interesting, a lot more quickly than what you might see in other games of the genre. Additionally, since resources don’t exist, you don’t have to worry about collecting/harvesting them, or being tied to “protecting the goldmine”. This gives the players a freedom of mobility that is rare in an RTS and adds a lot of versatility in term of a player’s approach to their offensive and defensive maneuvering.

The second major break from most traditional RTS elements is in an emphasis on technical skill in direct attacks and defensive placement. The creation and management of autonomous objects is a crucial element in playing the game, but so too is their skillful, manual, implementation. All placements in Hyperbol, are done directly from your battle-tank with the mouse and crosshairs resting very close to the ship itself when you seek to fire. This crosshair is within a very small area that the player must control with exacting precision for the angel and velocity of the objects issued forth from the ship to come out just right. What this ultimately means is that the farther you seek to place an object or bullet from your ship, the more skill and precision are required in the aiming. The velocity of your projectile can play a crucial role as well, such as when you are attempting to place an object that must avoid bullets from a crossfire or other defensive elements or are using weapons such as “time bombs”. The importance of this skill, however, is not limited to offensive activities. Barrier “fences”, for instance, can be erected to shield or seal one area from other players, but those too are issued forth from your main player controlled tank and are placed in the same manner as offensive shots (with a dedicated button to activate them once they have arrived at the location you chose to make them stationary). This means that the tank must be maneuvered to a point where it has a clear line of sight between itself and the area the player wants to place the objects. This also means that a precision implementation of that placement in relation to corresponding objects is also required (in the case of the “fence” the “posts” must be placed within a very delicate distance from one another for their electrical “mesh” to be complete) be they offensive or strategic elements. The game also goes to great lengths to play with that dichotomy. Some of the defensive objects that can be placed by the player are objects like singularities or gravity wells. These objects can block or deflect another player’s offensive weapons in patterns often times resembling a linear curve. This means that if a player wants to take a shot at another player but is blocked by such a barrier, he can often times adjust his aim to compensate for the disruption created by the defenses and may still be able to get a clean shot. Additionally the game adds certain weapons that can reflect off walls, curve when shot, or can change direction after they have been sent out. All of this is designed to give players a way to get around the barriers their opponents have created, yet at the same time, makes those barriers a necessary part of the combination of skill, weapons, and luck required to get to your foe.

On a technical level the game is sound. It ran well enough on my modest machine. The graphics are clean and pragmatic. Their style, though somewhat bland to me, I think was very reminiscent of the more modern renditions of Tempest (such as X on the PSX) with galaxies swirling in the background and lots of fancy particle effects and a distinctly high-tech look for the interface and combat arena. The sound-tracking was a brand of “space-techno” that (before you roll your eyes) was actually remarkably good and suited the action quite well. As of right now, the game does not have single player support, so the competency/creativity of the AI will certainly be a factor in this game once that portion is finished (and given the complex elements of this game, that will be no small task).

I think however, that once this game gets the visual spicing that has been promised, the gameplay gets further honed and balanced for heavy play, and once a solid AI is added, we may have a really important first winner for Iocaine on our hands.