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.

Global status system

Biotama has some global parameters, which can change over time and affect all biota in the game.

Atmospheric parameters

The global atmosphere's composition is simplified into concentrations of two gases:

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
- The higher the concentration, the better plants are able to grow
- If the concentration is very low, plants will lose HP
- If the concentration is very high, fungi and animals will lose HP
Oxygen (O2)
- If the concentration is very low, fungi and animals will lose HP

Biome status system

The globe is composed of biomes, which are in turn composed of biota. Biomes have parameters which apply to all biota within them.

These properties apply to all biota within a given biome:

Ambient temperature
Ambient humidity
Local wind speed and direction

Entity status system

Every living entity in the world has a current and maximum number of hitpoints (HP) as well as a set of properties and status effects.

Example

Properties:

Name: Mother Tree
HP (Current): 89
HP (Max): 100
Kingdom: Plante
Species: Oak (Quercus)

Status Effects:

When in sunlight:
- +0.8 HP/day
When in the presence of phosphorous:
- +1.2 HP/day
When lacking water:
- -0.5 HP/day
During a wind storm:
- -2.0 HP/day

Status effects

Entities can obtain temporary Status Effects based on their current environment and their Survival Requirements.

Example

A fungus which is exposed to too much sun will take HP damage over time, and will eventually die if it doesn't find shade.

Survival requirements

Each organism in Biotama requires certain things to avoid losing HP and dying.

Plantae

All plants require:

Sunlight
Water
Carbon Dioxide

Trees also require:

Phosphorous (P)
Nitrogen (N)
Potassium (K)

Fungi

All fungi require:

High humidity
Low or no sunlight
Carbon (C)
Nitrogen (N)
Oxygen (O)

Animalia

All animals require:

Oxygen (O)
Water (H2O)
A food source depending on their diet (carnivorous/herbivorous/omnivorous/insectivorous)

Chemistry

Plants in the real world require 17 essential elements to survive. Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H), and Oxygen (O) are acquired from air, water, or both.

Plants in Biotama store Carbon from the atmosphere, reducing global CO2 levels. Their amount of stored Carbon is proportional to their size. If the plant burns or decays, it releases the Carbon back into the atmosphere.

The soil elements relevant to Biotama are

Nitrogen (N)
Phosphorous (P)
Potassium (K)

Nitrogen

Can only be used by plants via nitrogen fixation which enriches the soil via lightning, fungi, and bacteria
Can not be used by plants directly from the atmosphere as a gas
Provides quicker leaf and fruit growth plants
When deficient, causes yellow leaves and slow growth, and inhibits fruit growth in plants

Phosphorus

Is added to the soil by decaying plants or animals, or occasional random atmospheric deposits from other areas
Is decreased by plant growth or soil erosion
Increases growth in plants
When deficient, causes dark green leaves and slow growth in plants, and prevents budding/flowering

Potassium

Is added to the soil via precipitation or geological events
Is decreased by plant growth or soil erosion
When deficient, causes reddish-brown leaves in plants, and makes them more vulnerable to winter weather

Realism Notes

The rest of the core elements are intentionally not part of Biotama for simplicity and scope management: Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Sulfur (S), Boron (B), Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn), Copper (Cu), Chlorine (Cl), Molybdenum (Mo), and Nickel (Ni).
Plants technically H2PO4- (dihydrogen phosphate), HPO42- (hydrogen phosphate), PO43- (phosphate). We simplify this in Biotama to just Phosphorus (P).
Main source: https://www.bctfpg.ca/horticulture/fruit-tree-nutrition/essential-mineral-nutrients-in-plants-deficiency-toxicity-symptoms-sources-recommendations/

Production

TBD

Art

Biotama uses a stylized art style, with flat textures and meshes with limited poly counts. This allows us to more easily manage performance, scope, and budget, as well as giving the project a unique aesthetic.

Shaders will be used heavily to convey time of day, seasons, and weather effects.

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.

Builds are currently only being tested on Windows 11.

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. 3D meshes are created using Blender.

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.