Unique gaming experience with ‘Threta’
Sri Lanka is slowly on its way towards achieving greater heights in the gaming industry.
Earlier in March, this year, tech startup Prodigi Interactive released the trailer for ‘Threta’.
The game, as they defined it, “is the Asian equivalent of ‘God of War’, and is aimed to be released in 2020. This week we speak to the team behind Prodigi Interactive, who give us an insight into the work that goes into ‘Threta’.
Official Threta Poster ‘Royal Soldier’
‘Threta’ is a narrative-driven fantasy/adventure game that finds its inspiration in Sri Lankan mythologies and historical characters. The team selected one of the key stories out of the country’s rich history and added an element of fantasy to modernise it.
Since it’s a narrative driven game, the exploration part of it will be linear. However, the player will be given options to explore the environment within a specific area unlike most linear games, we find.
Founded in 2018 by Yasith Nayana Sirisena along with his batch mates from SLIIT, Prodigi Interactive excels in interactive media, game development, 3D animation, movie production and virtual and augmented reality. It also researches, develops and executes WebVR and WebAR.
Today, the company is backed by Hyperion Ventures, Navid Munas and Le Fantastical Holdings, Ravihans Watekepotha, Lahiru Rajapaksha and Shan V Perera.
The start-up believe their team is their stronghold. The preliminary research for the game began in early 2016 by core team members Yasith Nayana (CEO), Karthik Keyan (CCO/Game Director) and Dilan Anjana (CTO/ Head of Game Development).
Gaming development only began towards mid-2018, after the Prodigi team met with Shan (Game Story Director). After many days of brainstorming with the core team, Shan finally created a story that laid the foundation for Threta and its characters.
At the onset, they believed this gaming experience had to be unique. This is why they also created their own alphabet after having carefully studied ancient Pali (Magadhi), Burmese, Thai, Tamizh and Sinhala. Shan and Ruchika Deeptha (Operations Manager) had conducted a comprehensive research and sketched the alphabet. Supun Ravisanka (Lead Artist) then created a standard font face from the sketches.
Additionally the team also looked into clothing, weapons, armor and textures of the ancient people and their surroundings in order to recreate them in the game.
‘Threta’ is currently in phase two, which is the production process. Sachin Sanjeev (3D Generalist) and Ravindu Perera (Lead Modeling Artist) are the key team members behind this, we are told.
The team’s main aim is to show the world how rich the Sri Lankan history and culture is. To achieve this, they’ve also decided to create their own combat system, which is based on ‘Angampora’, the Sri Lankan ancient martial art style that originated in Sri Lanka.
“Threta is the first game development company to use this technology to transfer the Angampora combat style into Unreal 4 game engine,” Shan tells us.
Threta at Google I/O 2019. From Left to right: Dharshan Sinnathambi, Yasith Nayana, Karthi Keyan, Dilan Anjana, Shan V Perera, Ruchika Deeptha, Supun Ravisanka and Sachin Sanjeev
The game is set in ancient times in Sri Lanka. “Since this has not been seen before we want to make sure they experience the true beauty of Sri Lanka,” he says. It will also feature monumental locations in ancient Sri Lanka, which will be familiar to anyone in the world who knows the country. In some ways, the team were also inspired by the visual quality, gameplay and fantasy elements of ‘God of War.’ Much like how this series introduced Norse mythology to gaming, Threta will also introduce its own. “Additionally how Assassin’s Creed uses a natural blend of both culture and fiction is something we constantly try to achieve,” Shan explains.
He also teases that the Threta gameplay solely focuses on achieving an end goal, which is comparable to the ‘Prince of Persia’ game franchise.
Interestingly, Threta will also feature the first ever AAA rated gaming experience to South Asia, we are told. Leaving aside the high cost, time and technical know-how that is required to make a AAA game, the team were quick to understand that it all comes down to having the “right attitude.”
“We constantly get the question ‘Why make AAA games in Sri Lanka? It’s too much hard work. Let’s keep doing what we can do’” Shan reveals. But Prodigi Interactive firmly believes in making an effort to make themselves heard and noticed on the global stage.
“Someone needs to do the hard work to reach there. We are more than happy to take that bold step for the benefit of the entire game development industry in South Asia.”
Their goal is to be remembered as one of the greatest in the business.
They tell us about two of their upcoming projects that will also help them fulfill this objective. The first is ‘GameRoar’, this will be a platform in Sri Lanka for independent game developers. It will help them learn, develop and monetize their own games. The end goal is to scale this platform to more countries in the Asian region.
Their second project will be Sri Lanka’s first 3D animation crossover movie ‘Andare and Mahadana Muththa’. This 3D cinematic experience will bring together two of the most beloved characters Andare and Mahadana Muththa along with the respective characters in their own worlds.
For more information on ‘Threta’, visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/threta and their Instagram and Twitter accounts at @thretagame