B.I.O.T.A. Review

pczone.co.uk:

B.I.O.T.A is a 2D action Metroidvania game by an Italian, one-man development studio, Small Bros, AKA Ivan Porrini, over a two year period.

Unlike many games, this title fits snugly and truly into the Metroidvania genre, as items are used to unlock areas of the map. In BIOTA, this results in the use of vehicles to travel to parts of the map otherwise inaccessible. 

So first off, let’s talk numbers. BIOTA offers 8 character classes, about 6 to 7 hours of gameplay, and 54 interchangeable colour palettes that completely change the game’s visual appearance. 

But let’s be real for a second. The retro games market can feel as cluttered and stale as a teenager’s bedroom. Games of this niche must therefore have something special to mark them out from the retro riff-raff. So what does BIOTA have, aside from a few pretty colours?

The story of BIOTA is simple but perfect for this kind of game and the past games to which it is alluding.

An alien plague is taking over the world and infecting people, plants and animals and it’s your job to stop it. With fire, bullets, or whatever else you can get your hands on. Simple, right? Well yeah, apart from at the end, when things go a bit awry and there’s a slight twist. But we will leave you to discover that for yourself. 

The story, be it simple, is perfect for facilitating everything that needs to happen in the game. You need to shoot aliens. You need to travel around a bit. Then you need to shoot some more, slightly bigger aliens. And that’s about it. Ideal. 

Being an 8-bit game, BIOTA is aesthetically simple and the world, like the story is simple too. The world is hostile, aggressive and very much weapon-oriented. Fear and paranoia run rife through the ranks of the soldiers, as they feel