BIOTOMATA
Deep beneath, a chrysalis stirs...
BIOTOMATA is a semi-active, sci-fi themed incremental with elements of strategy and story.
Note to Itch.io players:
If the game loads to a weird aspect ratio (i.e. super stretched), click on fullscreen then unfullscreen to restore the correct aspect ratio! (This likely has to do will how the game detects mobile layout on load, and how itch.io resizing the game window doesn't properly trigger the window resize listener in-game. Appreciate your patience!)
For new players:
I hope you'll enjoy the game! :D
For returning players:
Welcome back! Many new QoL updates have been added since the first launch, including:
- Endgame balancing: You now get more Embers to spend with each unlocked ending! A "Challenge Mode" toggle is added to settings to revert back to the original, more strategy-oriented balancing. This change is made to hopefully accommodate both the "I love numbers go up and becoming OP!" crowd and the "I love strategy in incrementals!" crowd <3
- Additional 25K starting mutagen upon reaching level 35 as an extra boost to ending hunters.
- New "Decimate" mechanic. One-shot enemies with 3x less combined stats than you with a single button click.
- "Auto-Decimate" option in settings to effectively reduce decimation to 0 clicks.
- Auto-use combat moves when ready by long-holding the move icon. (Should reduce early-game repetitiveness)
- Option to remember auto-use moves in settings.
- Added settings option to show combat and reset formulas.
- Three moveset loadout slots! (Old moveset will need to be reassigned to account for new save structure, apologies in advance!)
- Instead of repeat clicks, you can now long hold the upgrade button to continuously spend Biomatter.
- "Double click to mutate" now has a minor confirmation prompt.
- Chrysalis now has icons which indicate which upgrades have been unlocked since last view.
- On mobile, scroll position of the cascade screen is now saved.
- Status effect tooltips on Moveset description screen.
- Info screen with updated credits.
- Endings Gallery.
I also hope you'll enjoy the game! :D
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Optional Time in Run Multiplier Cap!52 days ago
- Just some wee bugfixes to the game + windows executable91 days ago
- Windows Executable!Aug 26, 2025
Comments
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Big fan of this one, very well made. Excited to try out any future projects you might work on!
P.S.S ACUITY is nigh useless; the numbers need tweaking. Even late-game, even with critical hits as a focus, you barely get a (on average, deviations notwithstanding) 1.1-1.2x damage multiplier while if you just put more of the points into the main scaling stat you'd get easily a ~1.3x (on average, some upgrades are better for combat rather than events than others) multiplier with practically a third or fourth of the cost.
It is not even good as a spill-over stat because spending those points on any other combat skill is more effective for sustain or AP management (not including DEXTERITY for non-DEX builds).
And here I thought I was so clever, avoiding evolving until after I had completed the side-quest...
Personally, I think it was a missed opportunity for some extremely interesting endings. If you wanted to maintain a dyad of endings, I would suggest the following: 6A is overshadowed by 6B, not shaking up the formula, and evokes similar feelings as 1A, and 5A is also similar, being far less interesting than 5B. Since the player is assumed to have already mastered the combat in late-game (since they presumably have gotten all #A routes), the feeling of discovering the alternate endings for each path could be expanded upon further with doing things in an unexpected order (as much as the linearity of the game allows) and would keep interest while the endings are ground out for completion. I got bored grinding every ending because there isn't much strategy (you can just use proto-form for every fight except the last, then evolve rapidly to get your desired ending with the help of AeLOT biomass, which is quite dull.)
Otherwise, the game was highly engaging and entertaining, and manages to conceal its inspirations just long enough to maintain intrigue while still knowing what audience it cultivates. Highly recommend.
P.S Just a minor critique, but I think the final eye upgrade is a bit unimaginative, simply rehashing the previous tier's exciting change - perhaps invert the colors in addition to shifting hues, or some other filter?
10/10, especially for your first ever fully finished game! Incrementals normally get boring or slow after the first bit of gameplay, but the design elements and the story in BIOTOMATA made it fun the whole way through. Good combat system, whenever it started feeling repetitive something shook things up, good writing, good encounter design, well balanced, fun details everywhere, and in some areas challenge for 100%ers! (the stage 2 no daniel run took me the most tries, the final boss is good at dealing with the fortitude poison build)
Overall, loved the game a lot! If there was one thing I would change it would be making the encounters per area a pool with 3-4 enemies to pick from, and making the player unable to see where they were on the bar (aside from the final encounter per area) before a certain perception threshold. This would be to shake things up and make it so players don't necessarily know exactly what and when each encounter is going to be after going through once. Nothing has any problems now, but I think it would be interesting!
Great job on this, I hope you keep making games so I can keep playing them :D
God. 100% completed the game in one sitting. Took around four hours and one shower in the middle of it. I love games like this and I rather obviously loved this game. However now that I’ve finished the full thing apart from the one “challenge mode” in the settings because that honestly wouldn’t be that hard (assimilation moment or ha ha neurotoxin go brrr). It would probably only take a couple of minutes. Could even get the good ending for those. Guess human would do fine too. Actually now that I think about it almost all of them would be rather easy to do… Apart from eldritch. Eh whatever getting off topic. Now that I’ve finished the full game I have but one thing to say… I NEED MORE. I CAN NEVER FIND GAMES LIKE THESE AND WHENEVER I DO THEY END TOO FAST. Man… Not that I’m asking you to make more to it or anything if you don’t want to. I’ll simply have to go find another game as good as this one… Hopefully it won’t take a full YEAR to find another one this time.
(Funny save file moment) 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The game is amazing. The best incremental game I have ever played. Upgrading isnt tideous and annoying, resets feel rewarding, And once the game starts getting just a bit repetitive (not inherently bad) you start getting bits of story. Plus the fact that this game has choice based endings????? This is an absolute masterpiece.
I also like how the focus isn't "big numbers bigger stats" and instead you have perks that make all stages viable to clear the game and get an ending.
I adore how there are so many different gameplay aspects. If there was an expansion, sequal, or completely new game in this style I would love to play it!
(I loved all endings where you save Daniel :3)
Aww tysm! I definitely tried to make it as engaging as possible while still maintaining the idle/incremental "vibe", and I'm happy you appreciate it!
I'm also still really happy that people seem to be enjoying the "good" endings. Low-key I wish more horror games have happy endings haha, I like a good spook but also a "hell yeah we did it" feeling at the end :p
Am I missing something? As soon as I get to the incubator, the game becomes so slow to progress that it's essentially a standstill.
I've tried resetting a few times when I get to this point, assuming this is just the way to meta-progress, but it doesn't make any difference. I don't see any meta-progression choices that speed up exploration, and there aren't enough resources to scavenge to improve exploration rates.
Seeing as no one else is talking about this, I have to assume I'm big dumb dumb and missed something obvious, please help.
You may or may not have missed something, yes... :P
Spoilers:
In the cascade, scroll down to ascension > the protoform > amoeboid movement
You'll unlock a stat later that makes you no longer need this skill :)
Oh, I disregarded that because it sounded like it was referencing something I didn't have yet.
But now (given the context of your advice, thanks!) I'm realising I misunderstood and it's saying I have that thing equipped. I assumed I didn't as it hasn't made any reference to equipping things like that yet.
AHH yeah that's totally fair! Phrasing for the part-spefific upgrades was definitely a challenge for me; couldn't quite figure out how to word the description — "install" and "attached" feel just as weird, so I kinda settled on "equipped" for the time. Definitely open to suggestions tho!
Maybe something like "until you've evolved beyond the default [something something]"?
Not sure!
I'm currently stuck trying to complete the last section, not sure what I'm missing now lol
I guess I'm dumb or something haha
Really enjoying this game though :)
Ooh, last section definitely requires a bit of build crafting, especially if you're doing the purple route (unless you max it out). Some hints would be:
- make sure you're completing tasks (bottom right blinky, those give bonus xp)
- the final skill for each stage in the ascension tree is very powerful, and you'll probably need to have one equipped (depending on which route you want to go) and synergize with it to beat the final boss
- final boss activates their skill at 75%; bursting is definitely an option!
Very fun game
Sometimes it does take a while to understand where you need to go/how to do something, as I think I've been stuck on some parts (like the layer 5-6 with both options not really working and dying to 6-1), being kind of annoying and tedious.
But anyhow it is still an enjoyable experience and a good take on the incremental genre.
Spoilers (and further review + save file)
thank you for telling me to look at achievements as I would not have been able to do more than 3 endings. They are kinda easy to understand if you read the achievements, but figuring them out myself would have been painful.
I would suggest making somethings more visible (like I still haven't found the setting to make it save the active states on the abilities)
In general very well made.
Oh and The art is beautiful as well. Respect to the artist for that. And the vision changing with the vision level up is also a nice addition
save file (completed 100% achievements level 42, set 1 is for power (corrupted) set 2 is more for humans, set 3 is for the final being.
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Fair enough, thanks for playing, and I'm happy that you enjoyed the art!
For autocasting, you can long hold the moves. If you want to save that between combats, the setting should be "Remember Autocast Moves". Hope this helps, and congrats on 100%-ing!
This game was so enjoyable,
and I (luckily) realised that autocasting was a possibility early on, but that setting flew by me (I checked the settings once, and didn't find it, I just checked it again, and I'm kinda blind lol, its a good place to put it, just a bit hidden).
It was fun to 100% a game for once,
Good luck on this/other projects =D. Hope to see more from you, as this is just fire.
really great! the only thing i would change is making the endings a bit longer but i still enjoyed it a lot.
Fair enough haha, thank you for playing and happy you enjoyed it!
completed everything didn't feel particularly great about the ending that starts with "He came back"
hehe, it's meant to be a bit sinister after all :p
i cant hard reset, it says that there is no app that oppens itch-cave
That's quite odd! You should be able to hard reset by clicking on the save icon > Hard Reset > Yes, Begin Anew
Could you send me a screenshot of the issue?
can you make it more web friendly because the follow and add to collection is blocking the x
Oh, may I know if you're zoomed in or using a screen with a lower resolution? I'm not able to control the follow and add to collection overlay, unfortunately! I would recommend either zooming out on the page using your browser (and then hitting refresh) or using the fullscreen mode provided by itch.
Hope this helps!
Is there a Discord server for the game (unofficial or official)? I have so many ideas for fanart of the player character + the enemies + even some ideas for little bits of music , cuz the UI & writing makes it so vivid
and I really do love the effect of the UI changing colours as we upgrade the body, I went, "oh shit" when i first saw it go all red upon upgrading to Corrupt and then read the archive updates. Probably whole bunch of stuff I could get into about this but I've only known about the game for 2 days now (weekend so I accidentally sunk 5 hours already, it had me by the throat )
Unfortunately not, haha. I've always intended for BIOTOMATA to be several hours/days of a fun, self-contained web experience, and I'm not particularly active on social media to begin with :p
That being said, the game *is* designed to let player imagination fill in the blanks, and it's really cool to hear that you have many ideas! If you do end up creating stuff, feel free to shoot me a link in the comments. It's always cool to read about how others interpret the plot and aftermaths :D
And ty!!! The UI was really fun to figure out how to implement when I was creating the game, I'm so happy that you appreciate it! Here's hoping you have a fun rest of the weekend with the game!
Help i don't knoow how to use items :(
Items are passive use; their boosts are applied automatically :)
12/12 Phew, had to scan the comments for a hint to get the last one.
Congrats!!! Which one was your last one? :0
T'was the incomplete final stage. I blew straight past it to the end of the world. Then tried to bring the scientist along, but he got eaten. Thanks for making a nice little game.
Ah, that makes sense! Yeah that one's definitely a little different from the other one haha. Thank you for playing!
My save disappeared and I was nearing an ending of the game. is there a way to get my progress back
The bad news: unfortunately you can't get your exact save back. Data is stored in localstorage and it's possible to be deleted especially on browser history clear or if there are privacy extensions :(
The somewhat good news: saves are in plaintext, and you should be able to edit them and get back some progress. In this case I'd recommend exporting the save, editing "playerBankedXp" to something high (maybe give yourself a couple more levels for the trouble? lol), and blaze through early game. For item drops, if you spec for drop rate, you should be able to reach 100% drop rate for most items. And for archives, I won't spoil too much, but there is a stage that gives you ridiculous amounts of int
Apologies for your data loss, I hope this helps!
Welp! Ive managed to finish all endings, and got all the achievements, this was an amazing little game, and the endings were all delightful
You're delightful haha, but seriously, congrats on 100%-ing the game and thank you for playing!! :DD
Are you planning on developing it more/adding more endings and the like, or is this the 'final product' so to say?
Hard to say! As of the time I'm mostly focusing on irl stuff — still getting graduation papers sorted out, working on a portfolio etc. Basically finding some stable (and hopefully great) employment is the current priority, maybe pick up on some new skills, and after that, we'll see.
Rn, I do feel that the current game sits at a nice stopping point in terms of overall cohesion, and I do kind of want to leave it as-is plus a few QoL updates? There's definitely room to expand story-wise, and who knows? Maybe I'll be able to do something with it in the future? C:
Congrats, and I think you should keep working on this, you out of almost anyone I've seen on this site have the potential to make something incredible, and I don't just say things like that. It's all up to you though :)
Does the "bar" at the incumbator intentionally not move until you reset?
600 cm³ / 2.1 m³ moment
It does, just very, veeeery slowly, mainly because 1cm³/sec is absolutely miniscule compared to 1m³. To be fair, you *could* theoretically wait 139 hours to travel 0.5m³ at this rate, buuut you might be better off resetting and getting the × STR × 1000 travel speed perk
If it helps, reset is designed to be not inconvenient in the game (and more as encouragement to try new builds), and there's a lot of QoL shortcuts that get unlocked as you progress, in the sense that you should be able to get back to where you were pre-reset in about 5 minutes max :)
Excellent game, and great design! I haven't seen many other incremental games that give earlier upgrade stages and skills endgame viability with the right masteries, rather than emphasizing "max upgrades, biggest numbers".
The Perception skill seems like the odd man out, though. I'm not sure if I was just missing an indicator, but it would be nice to see some sort of feedback when Acuity triggers a critical hit while in the combat window. Outside of the global critical chance, only one combat move has a direct relation to your Perception skill; I wish it had more practical applications to get around the feeling that we're just leveling the skill for story events.
Reached 100% completion after about 6 hours on-and-off, and held my attention the whole way through!
Thank you for playing, and I'm happy that you enjoyed the design!!
The perception stat is indeed a bit of an odd one out, so fair criticism! I initially intended for it to be used as a shortcut for a couple more "puzzle" events, buuuut the ideas didn't quite fit into the development timeline / game vibe overall haha. It ended up just settling as a utility stat for item drops/damage boost. Valid comment on the crit indicator as well!
Congrats on 100% the game, and it's nice to hear that it still held your attention through it all :D
what a beautiful, original, playful game. Reminds me of the good old armor games days where more people used to make cool microorganism themed games :)
Aww, thank you! Gosh your comment suddenly made me nostalgic for the flash games era... All the fun, creatively themed browser games that a kid could've asked for haha. Rip flash you're still very much missed dearly <3
Really struggled with multicellular-evil route with challenge mode, for some reason. Think there just aren't much good fortitude attack skills to use that can burst down the ending enemy.
All the other routes were doable even with challenge mode though. Very fun game, very enjoyable.
Thank you for playing!! Multicellular evil definitely needs a bit more luck (i.e. the 25% for 4 corrosion stacks) skill and focus on poison, which provide self-stacking poison bonuses. For future readers who missed the info section, space can also quick pause combat!
Congrats on beating most of the endings on challenge mode, and glad you enjoyed the game overall!
hadnt thought of experimental treatment gambling to stack corrosion, thanks for the tip. was quite simple with that. Thanks!
No problem, glad it worked well for you!
saddest betrayal T_T
"but first, a snack"
no secret ending :(
No secret ending 4 u, you evil, evil creature....
i just wanted friendly eldritch horror friendo T_T
Finished all endings over a few hours only to realize there was the ability to save auto casts between fights.... I could've been so much lazier......
Thank you for your hardworking sacrifice, lol :v
Please add a toggle to turn off offline progress. It just feels like cheating in this sort of game.
Ooo, another user did seem to share the same sentiment! Right now the "time in run" multiplier already has a diminishing returns formula, though I could potentially add a toggle that caps the "time in run" multiplier to ~2 hours?
Might be quite a while before I can get around to it, though! Currently still catching up with some irl commitments :p
Why not just make it not accumulate time when the game isn't running?
With the way it's currently coded, it's agnostic to whether time is or isn't passing, and is instead based on run-start clock (to prevent tab throttling/simplify offline calculations).
I *could* do a check based on last save time as well, but I don't want to introduce more complexity to the code that could result in more bugs if needed, whereas coding a cap would be quite simple (and toggle-able, if anyone suddenly changes their mind and decides they want their offline time for the run). The game is generally balanced around having a 2x to 5x multiplier per reset atm. I could also make a configurable cap as well, now that I think about it...
Took several days, but I finished all the endings. Nice game.
Thank you for playing! :D
do items actually do anything? or am i using them correctly? Are they passive?
Yep, they are indeed passive boosts!
Ok just doesn't seem so. May be so tiny can't notice.
Yep, each item provides a small boost (~5%) so one individual item won't change much, but if you consider the 100 item cap, it adds up :)
100% the game with challenge mode on. IT was a lot more difficult than expected.
Congratulations! Haha yep, it is called "challenge mode" after all, awesome job for beating it :D
can someone please help me? I cant get past the amoeba at the start. is there something I missed?
You can use multiple moves at once! Also, the "correct" moves should be the basic attack and feeble hit, since they bothbscale with PWR
just 100% the game, it was fun
It would be fun i there was different achievements for transforming in front of the guy or reaching the end as anthropoid
Congrats for beating the game! Haha yea that'd be pretty funny lol; for the anthropoid ending I mostly just like to imagine the same ending except it's some 8ft tall cryptid hunched by the fireplace just chilling and sipping tea :p
having problems. once i get to incubator i can't progress. the number of centimeters keeps slowly going up but i can't get past the first bar. 219 centimeters is 2.19 meters, right?? i'm not getting the math wrong? ;-;
Hi, your math isn't wrong at all when it comes to cm, but for cubic cm/cubic m, it's a little different!
To quote from another comment:
1m = 100cm
1m² = 1m x 1m = 100cm x 100cm = 10000 cm²
1m³ = 1m x 1m x 1m = 100cm x 100cm x100cm = 1000000cm³
So 219cm³ = 0.000219m³
This is a bit of an intended design to get players to look at and experiment with the "ascension" tree in the cascade (which relies on mutation stage or the "limbs" part). To overcome this "wall", try rebirthing, scrolling down to "the protoform", and select amoeboid movement (which gives x1000 movement speed as long as your limbs are pseudopodia). Later on, there will be another stat unlock that allows you to drop this skill. Hope this helps!
oh ok,, thank you!
no problem! i hope you enjoy the game, and feel free to leave more comments if you ever feel stuck :D
I loved playing this idle game, it was pretty fun to develop a strategy for combat and growth. Also, the mini achievement images are so cuteeee <3
Aww, thank you! I appreciate your appreciation of the achievement images haha
This is a really cool game but it doesn't seem possible to get enough INT to Breach the Secure Housing without at least being corrupted.
Spoilers
Hi, make sure you have ALL the perks of biogenesis, codex, and the voyager! From there, stay in human(?) form and you should be able to farm biomatter to push your int just past the limit with levelling c:
What a cute story! You made a really cool combat system that plays like a puzzle game -- each fight feels challenging but fair.
//SPOILERS//
My favorite endings were (1) Novelle, (2) silly doggy :), and (3) flesh pillar. I love creatures that aren't quite human.
Thank you! Btw, I'm surprised number 3 is on the list, but I'm happy to hear someone enjoying that ending!
I think my two favorites are the pro-human multicellular ending and the incomplete eldritch ending (your #3). Something about turning yourself into a living space elevator just amuses me.
really nice mini idle game and engaging story. i grinded for all the different ends.
Tysm for playing and congrats for getting all the endings! :D
sad that the tumblr tag for biotomata was barren, it's a great game! so i put stuff in it
ty for the compliment! and aww, that's lovely, I appreciate it! :D
Do you have a Tumblr or Discord? I accidentally made a bunch of hcs for human!ending Novelle and i want to see if they are creator-approved
Unfortunately not, I've just found myself not really using social media much besides Youtube these days :')
That being said, as far as non-canon(? sorry in advance i only have a surface knowledge of these terms lol) content goes, I do like the approach of "each player has their own version of Nova and their imagination shapes the world (until there's a continuation if ever :v)"! The game's details (i.e. the world, nova's form, the endings) are intentionally vague in a “less is more” way, and part of the design definitely relies on players filling things in with their own creativity regardless! :3
(And with the mild "multiple timelines" vibe from the game, it could probably work in a meta context!)
By the way, I wanted to ask:
what’s nova’s maximum lifespan? do they even have one, considering the extent of their self-alteration as shown by being able to configure their moveset?
That's entirely up to the player to decide! :D Though I do like the idea of a big pet that lives at least as long as we do...
What was changed with the update?
Oh, just some minor rendering optimizations for the stars on the chrysalis screen (2x performance improvement approximately)! Kinda why i didn't make an update post, but I guess itch sent a notification regardless? :0
biotpotata biorotata is on itch fire
Huh, you're right! How neat! I do wonder what triggered the algorithm, though :0
What an interesting game. I quite liked all the different endings and that some of them are really nice! Getting them all was a fun experience because all the different evolution stages are OP in their own way. It took me way longer than it should have though because I didn't realize at first that the cascade number was the number of times you restarted the game (I thought it would be a reward for beating the whole game) so I didn't buy the faster resource gathering perks for way longer than I want to admit.
Lol, I'm glad that you enjoyed the game nonetheless! To be more accurate, you can gain multiple levels per restart, and you can check your current level on the top left of the cascade screen :)
can somebody post a picture of all the endings pls, I'm bad at games and tireeed of trying but really love this one
like the actual text
I believe there's a couple YouTube playthroughs out there with endings, but if you find the game too difficult, you can always save edit to give yourself all the perks :D
Just click on the save icon, export save, look for "playerBankedXP", make the following number bigger, and reimport to potentially get to level 100+
Thank you! I'll try it out
No problem! I hope it works for you!
If you're still having trouble, let me know, and I'll see if I can find my dev save so you can potentially import it and view all the endings in the ending gallery (in the achievements screen)
Spoiler careful
It took many more tries than I expected, but I feel accomplished.
The endings are kinda wholesome and I really liked them.
Thanks for making this game :D
Thank you for playing, and congrats on 100%-ing!!!
As an aside, I noticed you've been playing on mobile. If you have any feedback on UI/UX, I'd be super grateful, since I believe most users played the game on desktop :)
Nothing got in the way, everything was easily accessible and I didn't notice anything out of place or visual bugs.
I was able to enjoy it pretty smoothly
Awesome, thanks for the feedback! :)