BIOTA is an indie metroidvania, and for some reason it’s really gotten to me. I really love it. I love the range of colour palettes you can select, at least one of which gives the game’s sci-fi horrors a sort of holiday ice cream chic. I love the chunkiness of the art. I love the chugging chiptune soundtrack. I love the fact that the whole thing is set on an asteroid.
BIOTAPublisher: RetrovibeDeveloper: Small BrosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC.
More than anything, though, I am a sucker for games in which each screen is its own fixed unit of the world. For whatever reason these are the games that most feel like real places. Run off the edge of the screen in BIOTA and you end up in a new screen. Go back and the enemies have respawned. I love this.
It’s particularly useful for a metroidvania, I think, because your brain kind of snapshots each environment, the layout of the platforms and what-have-you, and so it’s easier to start building your own internal map – a map that is at least in part a map of exits and entrances, of unseen doors that connect very seen spaces.
B.I.O.T.A. – Trailer Watch on YouTube
Because you’re on an asteroid in BIOTA it’s very mining focused – the worlds I’m moving through in the first part of the game are industrial spaces, hasty shafts cobbled together with lots of fans and vents and temperature management. For some reason the pixel art captures this particularly well: I can almost feel the unpleasant heat radiating off the screen. Going deeper – an imperative in this kind of game – also means going warmer.