OK, something I need to put up-front before I get into this: I was given a special thanks credit in the game. I did not contribute to the title (nor have any financial stake in it) aside from providing feedback on an early—public—demo and being active in the game's small discord. That credit was not communicated before the game's release and it was a surprise to me; it did not influence the creation of this thread as I had planned making this a couple days back mid-playthrough. I hope my history of trying to highlight smaller titles in threads on this forum gives some confidence to my intentions, but feel free to disregard/report this topic if not.
With that out of the way let's get into that thread title. At the most basic level Biomass takes the linear, but still somewhat open, structure of Metroid Fusion (while expanding on that wonderfully creepy sci-fi dread) with the aggressive pace of combat and world-building of Bloodborne. There's even a good bit of that reactive world that debuted in Demon's Souls where your actions, both obvious and not, impacted the world and NPCs around you.
There is more to the Biomass than the above though, but it gets tricky to talk about it. Much like playing a FROMSOFT title for the first time, mechanics and narrative are often best left to be discovered as you play… which makes it difficult to try and pitch Biomass after having played it. There were genuine surprises that had not been communicated before the game's launch; something I appreciated as the discovery was a big part in "making" the experience for me.
So, for something closer to that "base" knowledge set, the OT was written previous to my playthrough of Biomass and does not include specifics beyond what the (solo) developer of the game released to the public. Give that a look if you're interested, but my replies do mention a couple of things as the topic progresses.
[biomass] |OT| Choice & Consequence OT
Platform(s): Windows PC Release Date: PC - October 13th, 2020 Genre: RPG Price: $14.99 (10% launch discount) Player(s): 1 Format: Digital Developer/Publisher: Final Scene dev Size: ~2GB What is Biomass? How does combat work? You are able to use both ranged and melee attacks freely (with...
www.resetera.com
I do want to knock off a few "quick hits" though:
- Currently only available on PC.
- You do not need a wiki to figure out where to go: all about reading your key item text, trying to understand the map design, and talking to NPCs.
- The Fusion and Bloodborne influences are much stronger than my text might suggest. For an early example: SA-X.
- The game took me about 10 hours to complete.
- Combat is pretty straightforward but has some additional depth with how it plays into generating your ability to restore health
- Yes, there are difficult encounters but nothing impossible.
- You do have freedom in how the game unfolds.
- There are multiple weapons with their own playstyle.
- You can upgrade your character's stats and build a playstyle around it, especially once you get trait-altering mods.
- There are corpse runs when you die, but they also act as a benefit by giving you iframes and refilling your heal ability when retrieved. Having one in a boss room is a benefit.
- There is an explicit narrative that is revealed, but much of lore is something you put together yourself as you talk to characters and witness events.
- The music is also great; the game has a fantastic vibe from start to finish.
And to keep things moderately short, that's it. I know it must seem silly to talk around things to try to keep expectations measured when I also throw around terms like "One of the Best Games of the Year" and dropping two well-loved games in the title. But the discovery that Biomass offered is what made it so special to me; here's hoping more folk consider giving it a shot and experience that discovery for themselves!
Last edited:
