Biotopia

Ever since Minecraft got so successful and widespread, a lot of remakes and slight variations have hit the market, all of which offered some sort of improvement over the original, but only in some aspects. This is the case with Biotopia as well, which, although borrows some ideas from Minecraft, it also tries to be quite different from it in a variety of ways.

To start off with, Biotopia is closer to Terraria than Minecraft, to be precise, because of the forced 2D perspective and the platformer mechanics that are part of the gameplay. Hence, although you do get to go anywhere you want and destroy every block that crosses your path, the two dimensions can sometimes feel very narrow and limiting, at least until you get digging and try to reach the bottom.

Just like in Minecraft, your purpose is to survive the dangers of the world, by killing hostile mobs and building yourself a house to be safe from them. At the start of the game, you are asked to choose the world type, between one with fewer monsters and another with more mobs, depending on whether you want a challenge or just roam around the world and not have to worry about being attacked every other step.

Even though the perspective is in 2D, the objects are actually rendered in three dimensions, which makes them appear much more real than they would in a classical 2D platformer. However, this is also the cause of some very annoying frame drops, which do happen even on powerful computers. Once you cut back on the special effect, though, the game becomes quite playable.

Speaking of which, the mechanics could have used a bit more work, since the character is sometimes very difficult to control properly, especially when you want to mine or move through a narrow corridor, since you always get stuck in something. The combat system is disappointing as well, since it is not very intuitive and it doesn't always respond the way it should.

Biotopia might have some issues to work out, but it is on the right path. However, it could use a bit more originality, because there are very few things that are not available in all the other remakes, especially when it comes to additional game modes.