BioEden – Review of the Made-in-Italy Space Strategy Game

This year's summer recorded a series of records in many Italian and European cities with peaks of 40 degrees even in the cold regions of Northern Europe, effectively marking one of the hottest summers ever, or to paraphrase Homer Simpson, one of the coolest summers from now on.

El Nino is just another event linked to climate change, one of many that we are slowly learning to live with and that now occupy most of everyday public conversation.

Attention to climate change and its consequences has meant that these themes have also become part of pop culture, becoming the narrative basis for films, TV series, books, and video games.
And it is following this trend that BioEden, a strategy title developed by the Italian studio Broken Arms Games, is born, giving us the arduous task of patching up the many errors of humankind and finding a new planet to call home.

Surprise, Humanity is Doomed. The Plot of BioEden

As usual, Earth is in irreparable conditions due to human impact, which has led to extreme climatic events and made life on the planet impossible.
Humanity, or presumably what remains of it, has reorganized into an entity, the Collective, whose goal is to find a new planet to settle on.

We are assigned a devastated planet, decidedly unsuitable for human life, which we will therefore have to reclaim to allow for a series of favorable conditions.

To do this, the various guilds into which the collective has divided will come to our aid, each with a different vision and values.
The Technology Guild will propose that we extract as many materials as possible with the aim of building new buildings and structures that facilitate the restoration of the planet.
The Nature Guild, on the other hand, will push for an operation that involves the least possible impact, thus a slower and less aggressive restoration of the planet.
The Explorers' Guild will pique our desire to discover what regions and areas the planet has to offer.
The Reconstruction Guild will propose a vision oriented towards material recycling, imposing a greater strategy in the priority to follow.
The Mystics' Guild, on the other hand, will opt for an approach focused on discovering the secrets the planet hides.

The approach and methods to follow will in any case be managed by the collective, which will guide us step by step towards the focal points of the planet's reclamation.

Build, Recycle, Build Again. The Gameplay of BioEden

Ensuring that the planet assigned to us is capable of hosting human beings will require two phases: on one hand, the planet must be reclaimed, and on the other, the animals that are supposed to be the first to walk on those lands must be brought back to life.

Two tasks that are by no means simple.

The management of animal species occurs almost exclusively in domes where suitable environmental conditions must be created to host the various animals and encourage their reproduction; all with the ultimate goal of releasing them freely onto the planet.

Each species will have different needs, ranging from the flora present in the dome to the right humidity level and temperature. All factors that raise the level of strategy in the more advanced stages, when different species, totally distinct from each other, herbivores and carnivores or belonging to different biomes, will have to coexist under the same roof.

The domes and their animals are just the beginning, as outside them there is a world ready to be saved.
Planets will offer different biomes with different resources and problems, and it will be our arduous task to use these resources to solve the various problems.

In planet management, BioEden distances itself from the majority of strategy games. Instead of asking us to create empires or enormous and self-sustaining cities, BioEden pushes the player towards responsible resource management.

Extracting polluting materials helps in the reclamation of the planet, however, starting wild and unplanned construction leads to a high level of environmental impact that ends up causing unexpected climatic events and natural disasters.

The central word is "Balance", with the game encouraging doing only what is strictly necessary.
And it is in the search for this balance that one of BioEden's central mechanics emerges: recycling.
Every structure can be recycled at any time, returning to the player all the resources initially spent on construction.

A mechanic that in the early stages of the game requires strong attention to the management of the various structures, but which then turns into a continuous assembling and disassembling of the various structures, effectively eliminating the level of challenge, which is already low.

The only real element of differentiation and challenge is in the choice of guild one decides to follow, however, even in that case, at a certain point, the gameplay loop becomes quite repetitive since the objectives communicated by the collective are almost always the same.

Cozy and Very Pastel, BioEden's Technical Department

The folks at Broken Arms Games have defined BioEden as a Cozy Management Game; a definition that stems not only from the pastel color palette capable of relaxing anyone but also from a stylistic choice made of rounded shapes and animals that resemble real ones with a touch of madness added.

Unfortunately, the good things to say about BioEden's technical department end here.
The general design of the game does not shine with imagination, the biomes found on the planets do not offer this enormous variety in game design, offering the exact same challenges and needs, and the structures lack any creative spark to capture attention.

The game's soundtrack is too repetitive and overly cozy and chill, especially when playing late at night.
A positive note goes to the voice acting, which, however, is reduced to a series of snippets that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so definitely not enough to carry the entire game.

How Fun Is It to Clean Up Space?

BioEden is a game that seems to aim for the bare minimum without daring in any aspect.

It proposes elements and ideas already seen in the indie world with a backdrop of round and colorful shapes, offers balanced gameplay that poses no real challenge either strategically or managerially, touches upon a very current theme like climate change but leaves it in the background without ever delving into it, tries to be ironic but fails to elicit a smile.

This does not mean that BioEden cannot provide a few hours of entertainment, but rather that it might have some difficulty attracting fans of the strategy genre or players with several titles under their belt.

On the contrary, the simplicity of its mechanics and the extremely repetitive gameplay loop can make it an excellent experience for those coming from the mobile world and looking for an entry point into the world of strategy games.