BioEden

Three months ago I played the demo. And for a demo I had a lot of fun. It felt unpolished and the gameplay loop felt clunky but I figured it had good bones. For all intents and purposes I did 100% of everything the demo had to offer, from purifying the surface to getting the handful of species they had to maximum comfort. I played an hour of the full release and the most I could say was different was the length of the tutorial, which was pretty much a cut down version of the demo. Some of the same spelling errors were present, the opening lore dump had desynced subtitles and a mess of different framerates between faction cutscenes and resolution, and my biggest issue with the demo - the Impact system - was made more annoying rather than revamped into something that would've promoted the two gameplay styles the developers were hoping to push: extraction and cleanup on the surface and decorating the interiors of the domes. Beyond a sense of accomplishment and completionism, I felt no desire to give any of the creatures a perfect habitat because they didn't do anything new as opposed to the demo. The game doesn't want you to expand too quickly but the systems in play seem to ask the opposite. There's no incentive to go slow since building in the domes requires resources, not time. The earliest methods you have to purify and fix the planet are rapid extraction of pollutants which act as building resources, but the act of extracting punishes you for doing just that. Your basic infrastructure actively pushes you closer to the game being upset with you expanding too quickly. In short, even at 3x speed, the game would rather you wait 5 minutes between planting a bush than expanding the carbon mines that would make building plants faster and lead to surface purification. And seriously, how does me placing a bunch of solar farms and electric drills cause an Eclipse? That's an astrological phenomenon not a consequence of pollution. I had high hopes, but they did not deliver. This feels like an expansion to the demo rather than a polished release, and what is here is good for a few novel hours. I hope to see this receive more updates that might draw me back in, but for right now this isn't worth it.

Tragically, I think that the game misses the mark on what's really fun - building little ecosystems - in order to punish you in overworld puzzles that you can't win. I prepurchased this game because I really liked the demo for this game and am excited to see where it goes from here, however, I think there are a few key issues that need to be addressed before I can recommend it. 1. The game punishes you for playing it effectively (or at all) and the detriment vs. gain of structures is massively unbalanced.. You basically have to spend all of your "crisis risk" on upkeep structures (research, electricity, water) and then if you start trying to branch out to absorb more than one resource at a time you're punished more harshly. I've tried multiple different strategies for mitigating this, including using buildings to expand my power connections (instead of using the little connector poles) and creating independent islands with a single power plant + whatever I need, but it's just way too unbalanced. As my domes require more upkeep and research to unlock new things, my options are to wait forever or tank crises. One of these is boring and the other is boring and frustrating. 2. There is no way to mitigate crises and all crises are identical. For example, a 'frost' crisis means no water systems can work. And even better, the other crises seem to do the same thing: dust storm means no power, which means, you guessed it, water systems can't work. I apparently am not able to stockpile water? Why the ♥♥♥♥ not? I'm a sentient robot who can launch a biodome from outer space but I can't build a water tower? 3. "Upgrades" don't seem to actually upgrade anything besides the punishment you get for using them. This kind of ties back to the game punishing you for playing it effectively and the lack of ability to mitigate crises, and is pretty emblematic of the issues with the game. I was excited to get an upgrade to my mineral extractors because I was hoping it would let me extract minerals with less impact to the planet. Nope! It extracts faster (good) and has a higher impact (bad) so I don't even want to use it. Yay! Minor complaints: - The lack of overlays means I can't really see where the limits of my building zone are. - Why don't I have more complicated animal interactions? Come on, I came to this game for biology and ecology autism. - The game likes to randomly pull me away from whatever I'm doing to show me a screen of something happening (ruin discovered, resource depleted). This interrupts me playing the game. The only one I actually like is when I see the animals come out, but then they immediately run away from the camera field so I just kind of end up staring at some grass and a circle on the ground lmao. Fundamentally, this game is a disappointment that is designed to punish the player for playing it. I'm very sad to say this because as I mentioned, I was so excited for this game that I prepurchased it. Unfortunately I'm kind of regretting that now and it's a bit heartbreaking.

I was really excited for this game after playing the demo, and it is certainly very cute, at least, and I do like it. I sadly cannot recommend it right now, however. Having finished three guild quests and started a third, I got a good feel of the game so far, I think. The two quests I played are repetive to the point of absurdity - the main difference was that Blue robot liked to chat about technology while green robot liked to chat about nature. Both have a storyline about the other admonishing you for grubbing resources too fast, both apologize for pushing you to do this (pretty sure I was the one who chose to play it risky both times, unrelated to mission objectives, lol), and both have a small aside about in-guild sabotage that has no impact on gameplay. Even the missions are identical, with the main difference being unlocking different tech and bonuses. Given the grower's (green robot) flavor text, I really expected them to have less impactful structures and have a mechanic for studying the local, decorative flora littering the place. Before the full game came out, I really expected an "unlock stuff for future playthroughs in past ones" structure to the game, where you unlock tech from the tech guild, novel plants from the grower guild, and so forth. Alas, no such luck, unless new game plus is a thing - I assume not and haven't bothered to try. The animals... I love a lot of the designs so far, but god, I wish there was a compendium where I could look at the ones I unlocked during past playthroughs, and like, read all the text and compare the shining and regular variants. I was also surprised to see how lobsided some of the biomes were - the pairie has three animals. I thought this was a quirk of it being one of the non-starter locations, but nope, looks like each biome is the starter for one of the guilds, and yet, three animals only... I wouldn't have minded "less animals" for factions that don't have the biome as a starting point (and this does seem to be the case for at least the rainforest and maybe the Savannah biome, considering that weird giraffe thing that pops up in the final cutscene but not during gameplay), especially with a compendium, but as is... :/ I also think the animals need to be changed a bit. Animals from each biome want similar amounts of plants, and they have specific temperature and humidity requirements, and the associated objects tend to kill plant around them, forcing you to move the plants to the sides... And basically, these two factors combined mean that no matter the biome, all the domes end up looking like shrubland with out-of-place plant-life. This is particularly annoying in the savannah, where the large trees tend to block the various "look, your animals are doing something" cutscenes. I also wish there was at least one other type of den - everything lives in a cave, which at least varies in size, but still, one of the animals is a crocodile-critter and that one just aggressively does not fit into a cave, in all senses of the word "fit". I was expecting the game to become like Viva Pinata in this aspect - balancing plants, carnivores, animals that hate each other, animals that hate certains plants, decorations... Two out six aren't nothing, but does leave me a bit underwhelmed. (Maybe don't do the "animals hating each other" thing if we stay capped to one dome per biome, though.) Finally, I am not sure if the Planet cleaning system, as it is now, works well? It feels more annoying as of now, since it takes a while to unlock the cleaning items (at least one of them should really be available from the start, imo), but once you've got those they barely make an impact at first and then suddenly work way too well, to the point that the entire process starts to feel tedious - a bit like cleaning up in real life, but without the sense of satisfaction once you're done! (I did get that sense of satisfaction the first time I got done, all the way back in the demo... Maybe more variety in cleaning processes would reduce the tedium in having to clean up map over and over again...) None of the factions so far have particularly unique approaches to clean up, either - I played Terra Nil before, which might have skewed my expectations in this regard a little, but this aspect really disappointed me. :,) Anyway, in conclusion - I sadly cannot recommend the game right now. I can recommend the demo, but, whelp. Right now, the demo basically gives you the same experience. I hope that the game updates, and that I'll be able to change my review to positive in the future.

A few hours into this game - I didnt play the demo but feel like I could have gotten the same game experience out of it. I played on the Steam Deck at first and the controllers were not very good/half not working. Seems to run well on PC. This is a cute, cozy, sim that is visually pretty although its very repetitive. Build dome - set up habitat and plants - rinse, repeat. Not sure if there is much more to it, but seems to be the same thing over and over. Probably could have had a lot more interactions or choice with animals/breeding/habitats etc. I dont think its worth the $30 but ill play it to complete, it just may take me a while if its the same stuff. Maybe wait for a sale/or more things added if you're interested.

Truth be told, I really want to like this game as the concept of a resource management game where you balance progress and impact whilst restoring biospheres is a great one and the demo, whilst limited, showed great promise. Unfortunately the execution has not delivered. The punishment/crisis element of the game can largely be ignored until you get to near 100%, making it largely redundant to account for and more a task of tedium to clear the map, the mission progression is pretty generic for what it asks of you and the animal system of balancing their needs feels more like a tacked on minigame, where there's not really a point to them beyond ticking mission boxes. Releasing them to bring balance doesn't do anything functional. The different guilds also don't do much different between each other which, given their flavour, you would expect something more than NPC dialogue and slightly themed bonuses once in a blue moon. Some odd design choices such as a lack of an autosave (which means finishing the guild mission run will put you to main menu without chance to finish clearing the biome, potejtially resulting in hours effort wasted) and splitting water purification into lake and river (consequently making the tutorial not possible to 100%) also have a detrimental experience on gameplay. As a whole, the game leans on the casual and cozy elements, to the detriment of any depth and replayabiity. The game does deliver on look and soundscape, but in it's current state, I would recommend playing the demo and calling it there. Hopefully more system depth can be addded in future updates to make things more interlinked and make a replay with different guilds worthwile.

While it is cozy and easy to zone out on, there isn't any freedom really. Everything is predetermined basically. There's no reason to really replay it with a new save. As it is, it's not worth the price it's listed for honestly. I had a lot of hope for this game, but I feel pretty disappointed. Great concept, bad execution.

I go to work. I do environmental remediation at work. I work a 10 hour day. I come home. I play environmental remediation video game. 11/10 more fun than the irl job lmao

Was pretty fun felt like a great game had fun for a few hours but there's nothing else to do but be punished for collecting resources and I get why but "impact" system seems to punish playing the game efficiently then to actually challenge you It was very disappointing to see all I could do was just clean water and raise animals in a dome and when you release them they don't have much to do with the environment they've been put in just small weird little boogers running around I really Liked the idea and vibe they where going for and I really feel like with some more content and goals to accomplish that lets you actually terraform a planet and set up a dynamic ecosystem and food web and maybe some more of this weird robot figuring out humanities mistakes and learning tech from nature and and ruins i could easily spent hundreds of hours