The concept of a casual biome and creature management game is not anything new, and it doesn’t have to be. However, a game that focuses on a diverse set of creatures while balancing population and pollution is certainly more intriguing. BioEden goal for us is to restore Earth. 

Gameplay

To restore Earth, we as Keepers have been tasked with removing pollution, recycling waste into usable materials, and introducing new species of creatures into the world. Then, and only then, will the Collective and its guilds be comfortable enough to reintroduce humans. 

Doing all this is a huge task, and luckily, BioEden handles it in a task/quest-based way with no real time limit. When you first begin the game, you choose which guild to join, which dictates what type of restoration your quest will be focused on. 

The game, even though it’s meant to be a casual creature management game, still has many systems. While playing the Tutorial Guild, it presents these systems to you step by step, allowing you to learn them as you progress. Once you complete the Tutorial Guild, and I (and the game) recommend you do, it becomes more hands-off, only giving you the necessary goals required to restore Earth. 

As I’ve mentioned, there are several guilds to choose from once you start the game, and it dictates the quests given to you with the ultimate goal of restoring your biomes and ensuring your creatures are thriving. Perhaps it’s because BioEden is meant to be a cozy game (or maybe I’m just a super awesome gamer); it didn’t really feel as if there’s any gameplay difference between the guilds, except for the biome you’re placed in. The guilds are supposed to offer different challenges and focus; however, it felt the same, with the only real reason to play the other guilds being for trophy purposes. While this could’ve been better, it didn’t bother me much as the game was addictive enough that I didn’t mind having another excuse to play the game more.

Maintaining Balance

Most of your goal will be ensuring the species you place back into the world can survive there; this means proper food sources, fauna, and temperature. Depending on the guild you choose, you’ll be placed in an area with specific biomes (Savannah, Jungle, Prairie, Tundra) and are tasked with placing creatures within it. 

To do that, you’ll need materials and structures to collect them. Since we want to remove pollution and waste, BioEden focuses heavily on recycling. We need to “mine” the different types of waste littered around the world and reuse them as resources to help the creatures thrive. 

However, to reuse waste, we need structures to do it and electricity to run them. All these things that you put into the world have a negative impact on your surroundings, so it is important to balance the amount of structures you have with how much of the biome you’ve already restored. The quicker you focus on building, the higher the impact, and the worse it is for Earth. And Earth will fight back!

As I’ve mentioned, BioEden is meant to be a casual and cozy game, to a point that it almost punishes you for going too fast. The only way to get a game over is by failing to maintain this balance. This gives the game a relaxing yet addictive gameplay loop, since it encourages you to take your time and clean the biomes of pollution. I’ll tell you I lost sleep playing this game, focused on watching that pollution percentage drop, and I was obsessed with mining as many resources as I could since doing so contributes to restoration! 

There’s just something so satisfying about seeing a heavily polluted and foggy biome turn into a place filled with balanced structures surrounded by flora. Completing your guild’s task will conclude with them releasing your creatures into the world, letting you know that the Earth is ready for us again. It’s a great feeling.

The Controller

To maintain the balance, you, the Keeper, will need to manage all sorts of gameplay elements. Unfortunately, while it didn’t overall impact my enjoyment of the game, this is the aspect that didn’t feel the best, especially using a controller; the aspect that felt the least polished.

Much of your gameplay involves placing structures and elements inside and outside the domes. While the game provides all the information you need to do this, along with a very informative tutorial section, controlling it doesn’t feel good. This is the reason why it actually took me a while to get into the game, to the point that I didn’t want to play it at all. 

Placing the creatures within the dome is simple enough, and knowing what they need to thrive is easy. However, placing and adjusting them is less so. They have a bigger-than-necessary hit detection, so it’s easy to misclick the element you need to interact with. Also, once you choose a structure you want to place, you can no longer zoom in and out, forcing you to work with whatever limited view you have, unless you cancel out of that structure, change your view, and do it again. 

Even with all my complaining, I just adapted to it. However, I hope a future patch irons this out.

Perfect Biome

I loved BioEden. BioEden is a biome and creature management game that speaks specifically to the type of gamer I am. It’s a game with the lofty goal of encouraging balance and restoration, wrapped in a very gamified way that kept me immersed. Bioeden does this with a quest-focused structure and many visual elements that make you want to play just a little bit more, to a point that you don’t notice that 5 hours have passed and it’s 4 am. While the controls lack polish, it wasn’t something I couldn’t adapt to. If you want to lose hours in a management game and feel good about helping out Earth, then BioEden is a game I highly recommend.

BioEden was reviewed on PlayStation 5. We’d like to thank Focus Entertainment for providing us with a review code for purpose of this review.