Biotama/GDD
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
- A nature building game
- inspired by traditional city-builders
- 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
Biotama uses a stylized art style, with flat textures and meshes with limited poly counts.
Audio
Biotama's soundtrack is made in-house. Most of the music is piano-heavy, and the intensity of the music depends on what's currently happening in the game; when things are calm the music will be slow and ambient, whereas when world events happen it will become more dramatic.
Foley will use a mix of audio libraries and assets created in-house from source recorded by our development team.
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.