On its face, Biosys hits all the clichés of a mystery first-person adventure game. You wake up with no memory. Something has gone disastrously wrong. The last survivors left clues and diaries that explain what happened. We’ve heard this story many times before in many similar games. But it’s a template, and Biosys takes the clichés in an unexpected, genre-twisting direction with one hell of a setting.
The entire game takes place in a self-contained biosphere experiment. Instead of using that solely as a backdrop, Biosys simulates the artificial environment – temperature, humidity, water level, plant growth, the systems powering the biosphere – and makes it an integral part of the game. It creates a simulation in the form of a mystery adventure game, attempting an unusual, ungainly cross between adventure and earth science. Parts of the experience even seem like a precursor to the survival game genre. The game has some trouble balancing those elements, but it shows how elastic the adventure format can be.