BIOTOMATA
Posted July 18, 2025. Updated July 21, 2025. Played 26519 times for a total of 42201 hours.
description
Deep beneath, a chrysalis stirs... BIOTOMATA is a semi-active, sci-fi themed incremental with elements of strategy and story.
NOTE: KINDLY PLAY ON EXPAND/FULLSCREEN MODE, as this game is designed to take up most of the screen height! (Or not, if you enjoy your current aspect ratio, lol)
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 4x 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)
- 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.
I also hope you'll enjoy the game! :D
itch.io github ko-filatest update
The update that is actually multiple silent updates over the past few months that I'm consolidating into an update post November 12, 2025
- Minor typo fixes
- Level 31 chrysalis unlock change ("+35 max AP" to "+25 max AP, +0.25 max AP/sec")
- Updated cascade star rendering for a ~2x fps boost
- Fixed some rounding and display issues for values
- Tooltip to clarify that are passive and automatically applied
- Clarified is a cascade perk
- Added configurable Time in Run Multiplier cap for players who want to experience the game more actively (Defaults to Infinity)
- description text updated to clarify its purpose
Thanks for your continued support and feedback! Do let me know if any bugs and issues arise, and I'll put out a fix ASAP :D
view all updates
newest comments
Phenomenal game! I like the gameplay, simple and fun, but the story is what really made me fall in love with this. I also love the little mechanical ties to the theme and build and how each stage is reflected in gameplay. For example, when you are Human your exploration speed is quite slow in comparison to the zooming speed of other forms, as you are literally just a guy walking around.
I love the all the endings as well, my favorite one was the Novelle ending. Idk why but one of my favorite tropes in fiction has been some being that is most definitely not human who learns to be human. My second favorite/most hated ending is likewise the imposter syndrome ending. The antithesis to Novelle, its so haunting and eerie, I hate it in the best possible way.
I'm so glad to have stumbled upon this gem. Dev, I hope your working on more or another project, cause I really want to see more!
developer response: Tysm! I really appreciate you noticing how each stage ties into the mechanics, that was definitely intended design and your comment made me feel seen haha. You're not alone in enjoying the Novelle ending! Honestly I'm not entirely sure why I love this trope too but I just like the warm cozy feeling of "yay new fren!" lol, and the impostor syndrome ending is very much NOT that haha
Likewise, I'm happy that you played the game! BIOTOMATA has been a lovely learning / creative project, and i've poured most of what i learned into it, so right now I'm currently focusing on upskilling and maybe landing a frontend career in the meantime. I'm hoping that when I do dive back into gamedev someday, I'll be a bit more skilled programming-wise and have more to bring to the table in terms of features/gameplay :D
100% with challenge mode on. Not generally a huge incremental fan but this is really good. progression feels well-paced, endings all feel equally challenging (once you get to level 33 at least) good job all around, 10/10
developer response: Congrats for beating it in challenge mode! Glad you found this fun, and thanks for playing!
Probably the best incremental I've played in a while
Only complaint is that there are times when I was just figuring out the descriptions; (for example, the "Cognitive Bio-Interlink" action was required and it took me way too long to figure out what it was)
developer response: Thanks for playing! I might go have a look to see if I can make the interlink perk a bit clearer when I next update :)
Finished this game after playing it intermittently for three, days? Progression was incredibly smooth. Story was super nice. P.S. I got chills when I got the ending when I was corrupted and pretended to be Daniel...
The whole thing was super well paced, it got me hooked for some good hours! Fun, fun, game. Absolutely deserves to be the top game on galaxy.
Well, I still have some feedback, if you don't mind. They are pretty much nitpicks but something I'd like to see:
* The handheld transmitter unlocks the ability to decode archives, right? I was slightly confused about whether it still had any use towards the end game, perhaps adding a description to it like [unlocks archives] would help?
* The description of different combat moves should show the actual value based on current stats so I don't have to calculate them myself.
* Effects applied to both enemy and self should have some visible cooldown. Maybe both as a tooltip or a small pie chart. If there are multiple you should just show the one that expires first as the pie chart, and show more details in the tooltip.
developer response: Thank you so much, happy to hear that you enjoyed both progression and story!! :D
And hey, feedback is always welcome! Regarding the combat move description, that's a neat suggestion and definitely something had considered during development. The problem I faced was that it could show the either the final damage dealt (considering dodge/armor) or just the initial damage based on stats, but it felt like it would cause user confusion either way ("why does it show 0 damage / why is my damage output less than what is shown"). Omitting it entirely felt like a fair enough trade-off during development, since the math isn't TOO out there. It also helps with keeping the UI clean and less overwhelming.
I used similar reasoning for the cooldowns. Poison stacks can get really high, and while the internal engine is built to keep track of separate stacks, substacks, and each substack's damage and duration, UI overload becomes a real concern for me. The cooldown pie chart thing is pretty neat too, but my concern is that if a player adds on a stack, the pie chart wont "reset", and i fear it might give off the perception of "hey noooo why is it following the old cooldown :(". I understand that it would be obvious that it's not the case when one stack expires and the pie chart jumps to the next stack, but I worry about the edge case where someone stacks 2 poisons, sees the cooldown doesnt change, enemy dies before the first stack can expire, and they decide "DOT strats are trash" and never touch it again, lol
The handheld transmitter unlocking archive is a really good suggestion! It does seem to come up as a point of confusion quite a bit. Whenever I next have time spare to revisit the codebase, I'll see if I can get item descriptions to render conditionally (i.e. showing [???] when INT is not unlocked and [Unlocks Archive Decoding] when it is unlocked)
Once again, appreciate you spending time on both the game and writing a review! :D
first of all, i was wrong (stage 5 spoilers) the first stage 5 entity doesn't actually change, it was just the second enemy and i just thought it was the first bc the combat process at the stage I'm at is kind of a blur. Not a bad thing necessarily, stuff like that happens to me all the time. I'm on a roll, and i get blindsided by something that anyone else would definitely see coming.
secondly, (stage 6) i made it to hungering flesh and DEER LORD it frickin one shot me, what do i do here? I only got enough juice for ONE eldritch aspect even with the aberrance doubler
developer response: oh, LOL, haha no worries at all!
and what can i say, the hungering flesh is a really chonky boi. If you're not level 32+ at this point, remember to check your tasks and make sure you've scavenged most items. The complex perk makes this a breeze
If you ARE level 32 and have done those, you could consider NOT going eldritch, and instead doing the corrupted stage perks (PWR is OP); beating A.X.S.U and getting their suppression perk, and/or if push comes to shove, you could come back the next day to build the time in run multiplier for a couple more embers. Remember that you can select/deselect perks when resetting!
Hope this helps!
top comments
Damn what a game. It might just be one of the best games on this site and I've almost played everything on here to completion. It's kinda funny coming from A Tale of Poop and Vengeance to this, though your knack for story telling kept on. On that note, the story is a very nice touch. I don't really expect an engaging story out of games like these, but I did really enjoy the overall progression with Daniel and I liked how I could slowly see where it was all heading as the game progressed.
The pacing is very solid. Like you said in the info, basically every part goes by pretty smoothly (unless you're deliberately trying to skip something or you're doing something wrong). The combat is very nice too. Early on, I felt that the Constitution Vitality build carried me through everything but as I did Ending runs, I gained a lot of appreciation for the other builds. It's really nice how everything has its own unique flavor. The battles are also varied and interesting too, with most having a purposeful gimmick for you to adapt your build towards. The variety of mechanics is also nice and the game introduces and paces them out well. The prestige system is also strong and I never felt like I needed to grind runs and that I always had the choice to go for longer runs or runs specifically geared towards different objectives.
I also enjoyed the challenge mode. I always had a feeling you could do some interesting shenanigans with the ascension perks and I'm glad there is a way to utilize them, though I think it is for the best that it isn't like this way in the main game.
Personally, I feel like this game would benefit from a Dialogue/Cutscene Log or an Gallery/Ending Viewer. There's a lot of tidbits you can accidentally skip over and it'd be nice to see some of the endings again without having to redo a run.
I think some people might also prefer for there to be a bit more automation. I found it to be fine since you could just skip past all the first stages later on in the game, but some more decimates or area wide decimates could be a good quality of life choice. It's also not a particularly long game, especially if you don't do all the endings, but that's perfectly fine by me. In fact, I really don't think it needs to be any longer. As I said before, the game feels perfectly paced to me. Though maybe a wider expansion of a challenge mode with greater perks could work if you wanted to release it on steam and justify a price tag.
All in all, a really great game and I hope you continue to make more.
developer response: Thank you for playing, and an extra thank you for playing A Tale of Poop and Vengeance before this! :P I'm really glad you enjoyed the story! Funnily enough, I'd like to think of A Tale of Poop and Vengeance as a distant prototype-ish cousin to BIOTOMATA, mostly with the "event-storyline" and "mechanics that support storytelling" aspects. Ngl I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised with the reception it got, and it's definitely constructive/encouraging comments like this one which gave me the confidence to pursue BIOTOMATA as my uni capstone project
Happy to hear that you found the pacing appropriate and the combat enjoyable! I think it's pretty cool that you went with a vit/con build, since I've seen dex builds being quite common with midgame! Glad that you enjoyed the rest of the mechanics too!
The Ending gallery is definitely showing up as a common request. I'll add it to my TODOs, though it'll definitely need a separate UI component of its own, hopefully I can get it to work! Valid point on the automation, I might experiment with the decimate threshold a little and see what sticks better :)
Hard to say where my gamedev journey will take me next, especially since I'll be graduating soon and may likely need to start finding some stable employment first. Fingers crossed BIOTOMATA will be a neat enough portfolio project and I'll be able to find something that's just as rewarding while still allowing me to continue gamedev in my free time!
Fuck this shit, I quit.
developer response: Oh come on, they're friendly I promise :)))
Also i just had to doodle this: https://imgur.com/a/NMMDHx4
Dude, I came here to play some bad TMT games, not to find one of the best idle games I think I've ever played. The writing, the visual style, the gameplay (for the most part) was all superb. It was a touch slow at times and had a bit of the learning curve, but the unfolding story and the puzzle-like aspects of the endgame made this incredible. Kudos
developer response: I am sorry, I will work harder to make a bad TMT game next time :'(((
Jokes aside, thank you for your review! I'm happy to hear that you found the overall experience enjoyable!
Tip: You can hold combat actions to auto-trigger them :)
developer response: A very pro tip :D
Edit: Oh, also, the "Space" key will quick pause combat!
Absolutely amazing game, i played it originally after finding it on r/incremental games, it was amazing then - i cant wait to experience it without the 42 point cap >:)
developer response: Thanks for playing the original version (and going so far as to play again)! Have fun!! :DDDD