Stellaris’ new Biogenesis expansion lets you be a sapient planet or home-grow your own cosmic leviathan

Sci-fi sandbox strategy sim Stellaris will probably continue expanding until either the heat-death of the universe, or it encompasses every single notable genre trope in existence. Today, it grew a meaty little chunk of new content with the Biogenesis expansion, part of its ninth season of DLC.

With this expansion, players will be able to bio-engineer their species even further, create fleets of fleshy living craft, or commune with a fractured hive-mind in a bunch of new story vignettes. But what’s probably the most interesting option is the new Wilderness player start, which Paradox have boastingly called “the most transformative Origin we have ever added to the game” in a recent dev diary. Take a first look at the new flesh in the launch trailer below.

The Wilderness start has you beginning the game not as a civilization, but as a sapient planet with a whole new lush and green aesthetic, looking to extend its roots and maybe spawn a few planetary-sized progeny. You’ll be locked into the new Hive Mind archetype, but it goes far beyond that.

Rather than build cities or worry about what your population is thinking (you know what they’re thinking, because they are all you), the Wilderness evolves new mega-flora and fauna using the new Biomass resource. And once a growing planet has stockpiled enough, it can begin launching terraforming spores to spread your direct influence to other worlds.

Beyond the Wilderness, there’s also a couple alternative player origins. Evolutionary Predators lets you cut loose with the bioengineering side of the game, unlocking and combining perks from multiple phenotypes to create an invincible super-species—or just a bunch of weird scrunkly little guys. The Starlit Citadel origin catches my eye, too: A story-focused origin where you’re trying to figure out why hordes of angry living ships are trying to destroy your shiny Deep Space Citadel.

And if playing as a big creature or being bullied by hive-minds isn’t your idea of a fun time, Biogenesis introduces one new Player Crisis scenario for those who really want to cause trouble on a galactic scaleP layers will be able to nurture their own galactic leviathan—presumably once a cute little critter that fit into a fishtank that grew up (so fast!) into a planet-smashing ultra-kaiju of questionable loyalty—and unleash it upon the galaxy.

The only thing rivalling the scale of the leviathan is the price-tag. As is standard with Paradox, this new expansion weighs in at a hefty £22/$25 on Steam, or as part of the £38/$45 expansion pass, with two more chunks of content due by the end of the year: One focused on pandimensional psionic weirdness, the other on fiery, volcano-dwelling civilizations that just want to see the galaxy burn.