Biotama/GDD

An in-editor screenshot of Biotama as of March 2026.

Biotama is a game where players attempt to convert wastelands into thriving ecosystems.

In more traditional city-builders like the SimCity and Cities: Skylines series, players start with a pristine landscape, then convert it into a sprawling city, exploiting natural resources and creating pollution.

In Biotama, the player starts with a “Mother Tree” which acts as the core component of the player’s ecosystem. Trees grow roots that can connect together, allowing them to communicate and send resources between each other. Mycelial networks function similarly for fungi. Biotama aims to be educational as well as fun. It will feature real-world species with tooltips showing fun facts about those species. We are consulting with experts in biology where necessary to ensure accuracy to the real world.

Players build up different ecosystems in various biomes such as forests, wetlands, and deserts, with each posing unique challenges. They will face world events, such as forest fires and disease outbreaks. The player will navigate these events and increase the overall health of the ecosystem.

Biotama is

1. A nature building game
2. inspired by traditional city-builders
3. focusing on science and education.

Biotama isn't

A fully-fledged nature and climate simulation.

The in-game player lifespan is limited to a few years, whereas major changes in climate take decades or centuries. The player’s goal is to make positive impacts towards future climate change for later generations.

This is a game, first and foremost, and we sometimes intentionally sacrifice full scientific accuracy for gamification and scope management.

Gameplay

In Biotama, the player creates sustainable, biodiverse ecosystems ("biota"), as opposed to traditional city-buider human-built settlements. However, the mechanics are quite analogous to city-builders.

Here are some examples:

• Town Hall → Mother Tree
• Paths and roads → root systems and mycelial networks
• Money and raw materials → water, phosphorous, nitrogen, ammonia
• Power plants and electrical grids → sunlight and photosynthesis

Setting

Biotama takes place on an Earth at some undetermined point in the future. All creatures in the game are real species on Earth, but the continents and oceans only loosely resemble present-day Earth. This gives us creative freedom for the layout of the map.

It is implied that Biotama takes place after some global catastrophe. At the start, much of the planet is covered in desert, volcanism and meteor storms are common, air quality is low, and most of the water is polluted.

Humans do not appear in Biotama, however remnants of human civilization still remain, such as buildings and industrial waste. We do not state whether or not any humans still exist on the planet.

Biomes

The game world is divided into biomes which contain multiple biota.

Name	Description	Effects	Plantae	Fungi	Animalia
Rainforest	Densely populated with trees	Mild winter, high rainfall, frequent storms	Pine trees, oak trees, grasses, ferns	Anamita, morels, oyster mushrooms, lichens, fairy rings	Deer, foxes, ants, birds
Desert	Sparse hardy vegetation, hot days and cold nights, very rare but severe storms	Droughts, floods, heat waves	Cacti, succulents, grasses, brush	Desert Fungi	Scorpions, lizards, birds
Plains	Few trees, sparse grass, low humidity, evil bugs	Big wind storms	Grass, birches	Sparse lichen	Wolves, deer, rodents, birds
Boreal Mountain	Hilly, many conifers, cold weather on average	Harsh windy winter storms	Junipers, lingonberries, pines, spruces, cedars	Shelf Fungus	Bears, moose, elk, marmots
Wetlands	Humid, swampy	Hurricanes, droughts, floods	Algae, lillies, mangroves	Bolete, root fungus	Manatees, fish, caimans, birds
Volcano	Very hot, lava floes, lava tubes, flying rocks	Fires more frequent, limited buildable area, very vertical	Lupine, grass	Fusarium strain flavolapis	Iguanas, bugs

Systems

World Events

World events are modifiers on the entire biome that can trigger randomly. They vary depending on the current season and biome.

These are climactic events which add extra challenge to the gameplay. Players will have to strategically prepare their ecosystems to withstand and recover from these events.

When new species are introduced, new threats will be unlocked, but also the stronger the ecosystem is, the easier it will be to handle threats.

Event Name	Description	Biome(s)	Duration (seconds)	Status Effect(s)
Lightning Storm	Multiple trees are struck by lightning and have a chance of lighting on fire	Forest, Plains	30 Base + Humidity Modifier	Struck trees do a fire-resistance check to see if they can resist the fire or spread it. Nitrogen spawns in the environment.
Drought	Water becomes scarce, rain storms are rare and humidity is low	All	30 Base + Biome Modifier	Entities with a water requirement do a water-resistance check to see if they lose HP over time
Wind Storm	A windy storm starts damaging entities	All	30 Base + Density Modifier	Entities take health damage over time
Pine Beetle Infestation	Damages pine trees in the biome	Forest	30 Base + Number of Pines	Pines take severe damage over time.
Meteor Storm	Meteors fall from the sky.	All	30 to 120	Entities take health damage if a meteor hits them. Also deposits new resources in the level.

Production

TBD

Art

TBD

Audio

TBD

Technology

Biotama is being developed using Unreal Engine 5.

Asset creation

We are leveraging free, open-source software as much as possible. We are primarily using Rider as our IDE for C++ and C#. Images are created using Krita and GIMP.

Music and other audio in the game is created using Ableton Live and Audacity.

CI and Source control

Biotama uses Git and GitHub for versioning.

We have an in-house build machine which listens for GitHub commits. When a new commit comes in, the build machine syncs the change, compiles the code, cooks the content, runs automated tests, then posts the results on our internal Discord server.

Documentation

This MediaWiki instance serves as our main source of documentation.

AI

Biotama does not use generative AI for any purpose. All text in-game will be written by our team. All assets will be either created in-house or acquired via free and paid libraries.