Project Mothership

Welcome to Project Mothership

In this cooperative action-adventure game, players embark on an intergalactic journey where teamwork, exploration, and puzzle-solving are key to success. The game revolves around your mothership. Work together to navigate mysterious planets and solve intricate puzzles, all while enhancing the mothership to tackle increasingly challenging missions. The thrill of discovery and the wonder of the unknown await you!

Enemies

As they head back to their ship, the astronauts need to keep an eye out for any potential dangers, as they’re not the only ones on the planet. Two life forms are still around, even after the war... 😯

The armadillo is a native animal to the planet that usually lives in groups. Once peaceful, they have been corrupted by the mechanical symbiote that is taking over life forms across the planet. These relics of war make them evil because they cannot control themselves anymore. In their natural habitat, they like to bury themselves in the ground or imitate round structures. If threatened, they will try to roll over the threat or whip it with their tail.👾

The Robot is a scorpion-like creature that was used in the war to scout the area for enemy outposts, research facilities and any other strategic locations. Although they’re mainly used for gathering information, they still have weapons attached to their arm and body. They’re programmed to analyse any lifeforms they encounter and to eliminate possible threats, including the players. Without any connection to command ships, they are left with their core command: scouting and extermination.🤖🦂

Are you able to fight your way through the enemies to get home?🧑‍🚀


© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 28, 2024

Game Design

For our planet, the game design and art team use their creative minds to create a beautiful world experience. 🎨

They not only create the concept art, but also the illustrations, textures and 3D models. The assets are then ready to be incorporated into our game.

But what can you see on our planet? You start with the astronauts‘ spaceship, pointy salt pillars and bone-like structures that lead you to the quartz refinery. There you will see glowing quartz crystals and discover abandoned, decaying factories and pipes. The monolithic drilling outposts in the factory were used to ruthlessly mine the crystals before the war. 🗺️


© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 28, 2024

Gameplay Preview

The adventure begins! 🤩


Wow, what a game! 🎮

Take a look at what our team has achieved in the last three months.

With creative game design, beautiful art and thrilling sounds they created a nice atmosphere. Of course we cannot forget the brilliant engineering and our smart quality assurance that made a working game possible. Last but not least, our project management made sure our team did not sink into chaos.

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 27, 2024

Intro Cutscene

And like this our story begins… 🚀


Take a look at our first cut scene. Are you curious about how the journey of our astronauts continues?

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 26, 2024

Our New Logo

Say hello to our new logo!

Like every project, ours is evolving constantly. That’s why our graphics team worked on a new logo that represents our project as good as possible! 🤩

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 21, 2024

The Main Characters

In this post, we’re thrilled to introduce you to the two main characters of our game! 🎮

Let’s start with the Engineer. Tough, strong and resilient, the Engineer helps you shape the environment to your advantage.
Their suit is resistant to high temperatures, so they can traverse hot territories with ease. With their strong thermal hammer, the Engineer is a force to be reckoned with!🔥

Next, we have the Scout. A character that breathes electricity and is ready to take on any challenge!
With their suit, the scout is resistant to electrical fields and with their Volt Spade they are able to harness electricity to power up machinery and skewer threats. Even though their stature is quite small, the Scout’s abilities are strong. ⚡️

With these two characters, Project Mothership will be a great co-op adventure! You and your co-player will be able to help each other in diverse situations, defeat enemies and hopefully get to the mothership.🚀

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

June 14, 2024

The two playable characters engineer and scout

About the Game Praktikum

As we all know, the game is being produced as an internal project by students of the Hochschule der Medien (Stuttgart Media University). 🎓

As usual, project teams only belong to one course of studies. In this project, however, students from different courses, semesters and master’s or bachelor’s degrees form a team of more than 20 students who work together on the creation of this game. 🎮

The team is divided into 5 departments: Project Management, Game Design, Graphics, Sound, Engineering and Quality Assurance, just like a small company. Our professor is part of the team, but only as a supervisor and helper - the structure, ideas and project management are all done by the students.📓💻

This project is a fun way to learn about how software projects are structured in real life, about teamwork and communication, and about self-organisation.👩‍💻👨‍💻

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

May 30, 2024

Early concept art of ab astronaut with scientific equipment

Where did the idea of the game originate from?

Where did the idea of the game originate from? 🤓


The idea of the game started with one sentence by our current Graphics Head Benni: „Game about an astronaut that flies around in space discovering planets and fighting against their living conditions.“ 👨‍🚀👩‍🚀

His original idea a couple years ago was a single player exploring and survival game. In the course of time the storyline was further developed to an astronaut being sent to space for research purposes. His first landing has failed and the mothership got destroyed so the astronaut has to build a base and fly to nearby planets with a small ship collecting resources to repair the big mothership that can bring him home. 🚀

This idea was brought into our lecture and we as a team decided to change the idea a bit to create a nice co-op game with souls like elements.💡

Note: The original idea and drawings belong to Benjamin Münster.

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

May 30, 2024

Logo of project mothership

What is the Game about?

The game we are currently developing is called Project Mothership. But what is it about? 🎮


The „undefined humanoid species“ (UHS) used AI to win an intergalactic war. This led to the creation of „Omniscius Machina“, a super-brain-like AI structure, that eventually developed a mind of its own and saw the UHS as its enemy. It started to wipe out the UHS, but was stopped just in time. 🤖

The game’s main characters are astronauts sent on a mission to clean up after humanity. They travel across the galaxy in their Mothership that needs repair. The characters visit war-torn planets to destroy any war machines. 🚀

The Mothership was the most powerful of all the warships used in the great final battle against Omniscius Machina, and its on-board computer seems to be obsessed with a certain planet named ‚sal_03x3‘. No one really understands these high-powered computing units anymore, as they were built during the long-gone technological golden age under the reign of Omniscius Machina. So the duo was sent to this planet, not really knowing what is down there. While investigating, they encounter massive crystals emitting waves of mysterious energy. 🪐💎

This energy seems to attract the old machines of war as well as the native wildlife of the planet. It seems to fuse the two more and more, creating a mix of biological matter and machinery that behaves differently than the parts it is made of. It’s almost as if this fusion has given them a mind of their own, as if they were always meant to be that way...🛸

© Hochschule der Medien, 2024

May 30, 2024

Project Team

Winter Term 2024/25

Supervision

Product Owner
Stefan Radicke

Project Manangement

Department Head
Marketing
Mia Rose Winter

Game Design

Department Head
Game Mechanics
Alexander Schrag

Graphics

Department Head
3D Modelling
Niklas Mäckle
Animation
Tim Lange
3D Modelling
Jan Philipp Sievers
2D Concept Art
Background Design Mothership
Hwee Yi Soh
Level Design
Alessa Wiesner

Engineering

Department Head
Marvin Tran
Department Lead
CI/CD
Timo Eberl
CI/CD
Steven Aschenbrenner
Optimization
Procedural Animation
Michael Asmus
Optimization
Abel Bernardo
Optimization
Ferris Phillippi
Camera
Sound Integration
Henry Ruß
Shader and VFX
Marcel Triebe

Sound

Department Head
Sound Design
Calum Baird
Sound Design
Parra Rivera Candela
Soundtrack
Hoang Phuc Vo

Quality Assurance

Department Head
Abd Algani Khrfan
Hugh Craig

Advisor

Former Creative Lead
Game Design Advisor
Benjamin Münster
Game Design Advisor
Pluem Saengchan

Summer Term 2024

Supervision

Product Owner
Stefan Radicke

Project Management

Department Head
Marketing
Michelle Becher
Department Lead
Marketing
Mia Rose Winter

Game Design

Department Head
Player Character
Enemy
Game Mechanics
Tom Götz
Department Lead
Player Character
Enemy
Game Mechanics
Julius Steib
Level Design
Tobias Heim Galindo
User Interface
Level Design
Hoang Phuc Vo
User Interface
Benedek Lovas
Story
Ferdinand Kubiak

Graphics

Department Head
2D Concept Art
Character Animation
Benjamin Münster
2D Concept Art
User Interface
Gabriela Gerhardt
2D Concept Art
Modelling and Animation
Annalena Maria Hertkorn
2D Concept Art
Laura Krohmer
3D Modelling
Character Rigging and Animation
Jasmin Kitzig
3D Modelling
Character Rigging and Animation
Kevin Karsic

Engineering

Department Head
Shader and VFX
Marc Holderied
User Interface
Hannes Ochs
Movement & Combat
Kevin Cipric
Movement & Combat
André Schwabauer
Environment Interactions
Coop mechanics
Kimberly Köhnke
Environment Interactions
Coop mechanics
Tim Breunig
Enemies
Peter Gutjahr
Enemies
Brunno Serra

Quality Assurance

Department Head
Pluem Saengchan

Sound

Department Head
Soundtrack
Andreas Ganter
Environment
User Interface
Enemy
Hoang Phuc Vo
Player Character
Enemy
Julius Steib

Music

Andreas Ganter
Mia Rose Winter