Biomutant is an Action RPG, developed by Experiment 101 (made up of former employees from Avalanche Studios known for creating Just Cause) under the publisher THQ Nordic, and released for PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One on May 25, 2021.
The game is described by its creators as a "post apocalyptic kung fu fable", or "Kung Fu Panda with a touch of Mad Max in it". It is set in a world filled with animals who have mutated into sentient races a long time ago. Their new society centers around the great Tree of Life. One day, however, toxic oil came up from underground and began to poison the tree. Moreover, this weakness was sensed by four great monsters, which started to feast on the roots. It is now imperative for you to slay them all.
However, this is only a part of a larger mosaic, as there are six tribes around the tree, many with conflicting goals: for instance, only half of them are desperate to heal the World Tree to its former glory, as the other three are instead eagerly laying groundwork for their plans once it collapses. You are free to choose how you intend to interact with them, making decisions that'll significantly alter the course of the story.
The official website is here
, the 2017 extended gameplay trailer is here, and the 2019 demo gameplay is here.
Tropes seen in Biomutant:
- After the End: The game takes place in the far future where humanity has long since died out and mutated animals have taken their place. The world has been taken over mostly by plant life but many traces of human cities and technology remain and are utilized by the mutants.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- It seems that the developers were aware that some players might not want the narrator talking too much, as there's an option to decrease the amount of times he speaks, or even turn him off completely outside certain events.
- After the introductory sequence, the player will always have a cheap pistol that can't be sold nor scrapped. This is because without a ranged weapon, certain sections of Outpost Raids or even the World Eaters will become impossible to beat as you can't use melee attacks on them.
- Any of the environmental suits that you absolutely need to traverse specific biomes (such as the Biohazard Suit for toxic areas) cannot be scrapped or sold, to prevent the player from accidentally losing a key tool for progress.
- After clearing the first three regions of the map, the game gives the player option to auto-complete the other three, which can be a helpful feature for players who find the process of capturing the territories tedious and reptitive.
- Badass Adorable: The player character and the tribes that they can join are mutants similar in appearance to foxes, raccoons, weasels, lemurs and other small, fuzzy animals. They are also skilled fighters and monster hunters who regularly take down much larger opponents with ease.
- BFS: Many of the player characters are shown carrying swords much longer than they are tall.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": In the post-apocalypse, the mutant animals that have taken over the world have all manner of odd names for things that we'd recognize, such as calling a radar a "pingdish".
- Cool Airship: The player has one that they will need to progress in the northernmost portion of the map, as several islands in the oil are inaccessible otherwise.
- Cycle of Revenge: Lupa-lupa's antagonism towards you is because your mother killed his for being a meat eater. You can ultimately decide whether to kill him after the final battle or spare him.
- Dark Is Evil: You get a Dark Aura from selfish or pointlessly cruel actions like twisting a shopkeeper's arms to get a big reward for saving their business or killing captured wildlife, and all the Dark-aligned tribes want to destroy the Tree of Life and either subjugate or wipe out the other tribes. Downplayed by the "Maximum Dark" Lotus tribe; unlike the selfish Jagni and Pichu tribes, they genuinely believe they're making the world a better place and just don't care how many they have to kill along the way.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Some sifu believe that coexistence with the other tribes is possible, you only need to convince them it's better to stand together through diplomacy - or take their strategic territories by force and beat them into submission, whichever works.
- Dialogue Tree: The game has the player selecting responses through a conversation wheel. What you choose to say to people can sometimes affect your Karma Meter.
- Elite Four: The World Eaters, four powerful bosses inhabiting the areas around the four roots of the Tree of Life that the player can only defeat with the use of specialized vehicles.
- Exploding Barrels: The large boss seen in the gameplay trailer, Rocka-Boom, throws fuel barrels at the player, with no regard for its allies who can get caught up in the blast. They're littered throughout the game proper, and are just as devastating to friend and foe.
- Eyepatch of Power: The mascot version of the main character has one, as will the playable version you create.
- Falling Damage: Averted. No matter from how high you jump, you'll never suffer any falling damage at all. The closest to anybody reacting to falling from a big height is your mount, which topples over... for a couple seconds before getting right back up unharmed.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The game's giant monster bosses and enemies have names such as "Jumbo Puff" and "Flightfluff Jetspurt." This was intentional on the part of Out-of-Date, who believes that names have power, and that giving dangerous creatures such inoffensive names will weaken them.
- Flunky Boss: The boss seen in the gameplay trailer, Rocka-Boom, has a bunch of small anthropomorphic rat allies on its side. A fairly common encounter in-game is running into a single large mutant that is backed up by a gang of smaller mutants, such as the various bandit gangs.
- Gang of Hats: Each of the tribes has some sort of uniform or fashion style that easily differentiates them from the other tribes at a distance. For example, members of Myriad always wear yellow turbans. Their sifu are all also creators of a form of Wung-Fu using a specific weapon, though the rank-and-file aren't afraid to get as pragmatic as you are, bringing assault rifles to a knife fight.
- Giant Scrap Robot: The player fights one of the World Eater bosses in one of these. As a bonus, the player can also use it in standard combat or just as a mode of transport.
- Green Aesop: The setting takes place After the End, where humanity wiped itself out through pollution, and despite the intervening years, the consequences of their actions and wastes still haunt the world, twisting and mutating the new life into horrors. It's not exactly subtle.
- Golden Snitch: Your final karma choice affects your karma much more than any other choice in the game.
- Homemade Inventions: You can invent weapons by combining different handles and bases, no matter how improbably they seem. Katana blades attached to a banana and a shotgun cobbled together from different gun parts are just a few of the things you can create.
- Homeworld Evacuation: After pollution rendered Earth uninhabitable to humans, we apparently took off in massive ark ships, looking for a new home.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: When you fight the three disciples in the flashback sequence at your childhood village, you can defeat two of them. However, you can't defeat the disciple with the bow, since hitting him will lock you into a quick time event that you will always fail, resulting in him overpowering you and your weapon being stolen.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: The aliens being the mutants, of course. As seen in the above entry, they have names for things that we'd recognize; rarely would anything be called by its actual name. Little about humanity is actually known to the mutants, barring the Toxanol Corporation, which many hold in contempt due to their role in humanity's extinction and the consequences of their pollution still haunting the present day.
- Ironically, there's evidence to imply that the world this game takes place in isn't Earth and the inhabitants weren't humans. There are no depictions of anything human on any of the posters, ads, or graphics anywhere in the ruins you explore, and none of the writing you come across is in English. More tellingly, when you activate televisions in the game, the programs shown don't depict humans, but instead, often show plant-like people. Whether this is indicative of what the former rulers of this planet were like or if there's a group of plant-creatures in an abandoned TV station putting out broadcasts for giggles is anyone's guess.
- Item Crafting: Players can mix and match parts to create melee and ranged weapons, and slot in upgrades to existing clothing items.
- Iron Butt Monkey: Your mount. No matter what kind of scenarios you can get into with it, it is immortal and cannot die, not from falling damage and not even in battles (it won't even flinch in the latter). Even if you happen to drown it, the one scenario where it can die, you can immediately call for a new one like nothing happened.
- Karma Meter: The player character has this in the form of Aura, which will cause NPCs to react to you differently depending on whether your allegiance is light or dark. Some skills require you to have enough light or dark Aura to unlock them.
- Lemony Narrator: The narrator gives colorful and snarky commentary on the player's quest in real-time.
- Light Is Good: You get a Light Aura from heroic actions like rescuing prisoners or performing quests for free, and all the Light-aligned tribes want to save the Tree of Life and either unite the tribes or leave them to peaceful coexistence.
- Mini-Mecha: The MkTon is a suit of mechanized armor used to navigate the airless wastelands of the Deadzone.
- Mysterious Past: The player character has one and uncovering it is part of the main plot.
- Order Versus Chaos: "Light tribes" believe that the Tree of Life must be saved because they believe that you can get a fresh start in life without changing the world while "dark tribes" want the Tree destroyed in accordance with the belief that you must get rid of what you have before you can start anew.
- Pintsize Powerhouse: The player character and the species they belong to are tiny mammals similar to foxes or weasels but they're fully capable of fighting and even capturing the giant monsters that inhabit their world.
- Quicksand Sucks: "Oil Sucks" in this case. If you take a step in a pool of oil, your movement is restricted and you'll quickly start to sink. Fail to get out of there in time and you're dead.
- Save the Villain: You can choose not to kill the World Eater bosses (if going for a Dark playthrough) and this will have an effect on the story. In a Light playthrough, you can spare Lupa-Lupin.
- Scavenger World: The landscape is full of ruined architecture, items and weapons from when humanity ruled the Earth. The mutants now inhabiting the planet collect, repair and repurpose these various resources.
- Scenery Porn: Many places in the game world are absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous, but...
- Scenery Gorn: Just as many other places are horribly devastated, ecologically destroyed locales. Rendered in just as much loving detail.
- Solve the Soup Cans: Many side quests feature a handful of interactable objects left behind by the extinct humans that you can repair by solving simple rotation puzzles to match up colors. Even something like a piano uses the same basic puzzle layout, requiring you to rotate bits of sheet music around to get the piano working again. Mercifully, you can retry these as many times as necessary (you'll just get hurt slightly for running out of moves).
- Speaking Simlish: The creatures in the game speak squeaky gibberish, with the Narrator serving as a translator to the player.
- Story Branching: The player has multiple paths they can take regarding what tribes to support or whether or not to save the Tree of Life.
- Super Drowning Skills: Swimming wasn't a part of the player character's training and it shows, although it's downplayed as you can swim in water (or rather, wildly kick your legs and arms) for a few moments so long as you have enough energy. The second you run out of energy, however, it's an instant game over.
- Toxic, Inc.: Perhaps, just perhaps, the "Toxanol Corporation" should have reconsidered either their name or their byproducts.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can be as good as possible to everyone around you:
- Siding with the tribes with light aura and sparing the rival sifus, perhaps even getting them to join your own tribe.
- In dialogue options, you can put others before yourself and even persuade people to surrender without unnecessary bloodshed.
- Catching creatures and deciding to keep them, or pet them first before deciding to keep them, gaining some light aura in the process.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: On the other hand, you can be pretty damn bad.
- You can side with the tribes with dark aura and opt to kill the rival sifus after you defeated them in combat.
- In dialogue options, you can express interest in things regarding how it benefits you.
- After catching creatures, you can simply kill them off for a bit of dark aura.
- World Tree: The land has one called the Tree of Life, which sustains the world and is in danger of dying due to toxic oil and monsters devouring its roots. Part of the story is whether to choose to save it or let it die.
- Written Sound Effect: In the game, colorful words like "SMASH" and "BOOM" appear when the player delivers a sustained beat-down to an enemy.
- Unsound Effect: Executing a special moves displays its name instead.
