This is my first devlog for the Exobiota game project. I'm currently developing the game solo, which I started prototyping in the Summer of 2025. When the project actually started is something I'm not entirely sure when to peg. The current project evolved out of a project which I started, I believe, in April of 2025, which I abandoned after releasing a demo, for a few reasons, which I can touch on in a later log. I'll go over the conception of the project briefly here:

I started working on what would become Exobiota shortly after I had participated in NextFest in June 2025. It initially was a fork of the Demo of the digging game. This is the game I mentioned and it was called Off-World Prospecting. The first versions of Exobiota were quite unsure of what they wanted to be. They featured overland exploration of an alien planet via a Dirigible airship, which the player used to travel between mines, settlements and other points of interest. The Dirigible was cut from the Early versions of Exobiota to focus on the stronger first person dungeon crawler elements in favor of Dirigible exploration that most play-testers did not really enjoy.

The game did go through additional re-working of idea and the abandonment of the original premise, which had the story be about finding your sister who has disappeared into the alien wilderness. This premise was replaced by the current premise of the player being dropped into an interconnected cave and mine complex, and that they must survive in a sort of no-man's land between human caveland and the nation made up of the three species called the Kin or Kinship.

Eventually, this led to the following refining of premise: we are part of a delegation of humans sent to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Kin, after a long estrangement which follows after a conflict, over a century earlier. Prior to the start of the game, the player's delegation was ambushed and we were saved by a Psion, one of the species of 'Kinship', and they have changed our physiology to communicate with native life and use their powers.

We must gain insight into what has happened to us. We are amnesiac at first but we recover and link up with Talleyrand, an outcast diplomat and alien of the Hylic species, the lowliest Kin species.

Thus we are thrust into a dungeon crawl-like experience where we must fight alien monsters and communicate with alien NPCs to achieve our goals.

We have a set of attributes and aptitudes, some of which we can set higher at character creation and some of which (Alien biological abilities) we must improve as we progress through the game.

That's the gist of the project. The story is still being refined but the gameplay is mostly set. The three main things the player does is explore the caves, interact with alien NPCs who have some freeform quest directions, and fight off hostile NPCs. Progression is level based with a main level and a secondary tier level for the alien biological side of things.