Environments

The first idea I had for a biome was a deep forest style environment — every alien planet needs to have some form of life, and therefore some kind of dense, lush environment where the plant life is free to grow. As I mentioned in my worldbuilding subpages (specifically on Pandora and Subnautica), you must have some level of believability when it comes to creating an alien environment and ecosystem. I wanted the plant life on this planet to be unique and interesting, whilst still being familiar and biologically feasible.

Considering all of this, I had the thought to create a world based around fungi. Specifically around the idea that instead of any kind of trees, bushes, and flowers being the primary form of plant life, it was fungi that thrived. Obviously, the fungi on this planet will be different to earthly fungi, however they can certainly take inspiration from the more familiar shapes and colours of earth-like fungus.

For the second environment, I wanted to have some kind of scarier biome, to go along with the cosmic horror themes I had. An environment where you can't see is the perfect brewing ground for fear of the unknown, so I went with the idea of some kind of cave. Nyctophobia and claustrophobia were two fears that I found resonated with people moderately well in my survey, so this might be an intriguing biome to implement. This might also be an interesting environment to implement a society of people, so I had a think about that alongside the concepts I created for the environment itself.