The 31st of August marked the one-year anniversary of the very first Biome Battle, a minigame tournament for content creators in which the gameplay is affected by the seasons. We spoke to event owner and developer BitSquidd about what’s changed in the event over the last year, and what’s in store for the future.
“The biggest, most important change for us over the last year was putting a massive focus on improving our game design,” BitSquidd, or Bit for short, tells us. “None of our team are game designers or balancers, so one of the trickiest things was getting the right mix between fun, unique and competitive games.”
However, the challenge there made other aspects easier. “As none of us had an event background, coming up with unique game ideas was easy – and definitely still to this day one of our strongest suits,” Bit says. Such minigames include Capture The Flag / Laser Tag mash-up Zap’n’Cap, Splatoon-inspired point-capture game Oppenslimer, dungeon crawler Dungeon Dash, and cake-stealing game Hungry Hungry Hoglins.
“Since our first event, we’ve been able to foster an amazing team of people who help us in all aspects of the event,” Bit says, “with a couple of them focusing on game design, planning and balancing – not something we ever did with our initial roster of games.”
There’s plenty more exciting stuff to come up for Biome Battle in its second year of life. “We have a lot of secret things planned for the next year, some of which will totally reshape how we believe events should be run,” Bit continues. “We also plan on improving our game design at a micro level, and improving scoring and point balancing. This is by far our weakest suit and what is holding us behind in the event scene. Once we have this cracked, we will be sorted!”
The past year of Biome Battle has brought with it a rollercoaster of emotions for Bit. “There have been so many highs and lows in the past year,” he says. “Some of my personal highs would be from the community. It’s really nice to see so many people passionate about my little project, and we’ve received so much praise. Being able to open up our event to larger creators has also been fun, with creators in our most recent charity event including people I’ve watched and looked up to in the past – for example InTheLittleWood and SolidarityGaming.”
“The goal for the next year is to continue to expand our roster, and keep on making awesome stuff,” Bit says. “We’d love to interact with some massive creators and get them involved with Biome Battle, although this takes time.”
“If I were to go back to the first event and do things differently, it would be to tell myself not to stress about hosting as much, and live in the moment more,” Bit says. “I’m a perfectionist and any small detail that went wrong or that creators picked up on, I felt personally responsible about it.”
While a longer-term goal, Bit did have one more thing to tease. “We have mentioned the prospect of a public server in a few meetings – though this will be another one or two year project, as we want to ensure we hit the mark,” Bit tells us. With it being such a massive time sink, Bit and his team will also need to be confident in the value it will bring to the community, and further plans are yet to be revealed.
What is for certain, however, is that there’s lots to be excited for in the next year of Biome Battle, and that the event has no plans to disappear any time soon. “I can’t wait to see where we are in a year’s time!” Bit says.
You can follow Biome Battle to stay up to date with the latest news, at @BiomeBattle on X or in their community Discord.
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