Rewilders

Throw Minecraft, Farmville, Tamagotchi, a science textbook and an animal encyclopedia in a blender and you get something that looks and plays like Rewilders. It is a sandbox simulation that rewards building, creativity and strategy, with a highly stylized low-res look, think a stylish Minecraft, designed so new assets can be created quickly.

First, players choose a character to protect and nurture throughout the game. The cast was developed from pencil sketches into a lineup of keystone species, from wolves, tigers and koalas to orangutans and Peter the platypus, each designed to read clearly in the game’s simple, blocky world.

As a Rewilder, your job is to bio-engineer a new wilderness area for the species of your choice. Simple terraforming tools let you shape the land and build the ideal living space, then manage the flow of resources so the environment improves and the animals in your care thrive.

Each habitat starts as a bare block of land. Players carve out water, raise ground, plant trees and add shelter until an empty island becomes a living ecosystem, a simple loop that makes the idea of restoring a damaged landscape easy to see and satisfying to play.

When the land meets the keystone creature’s needs, it claims a burrow, and Peter sets off gathering resources for the nest. Your species produce offspring that learn from their parents’ mistakes, so the game grows more complex as it goes, and the more you succeed, the more land you are entrusted with and the faster the game moves.

Just when everything seems fine, dangers lurk around the corner: predators, farms and humans who come in and disrupt animal life. Luckily Peter has you, a seasoned Rewilder, with game wardens and renewable resources at your disposal to protect him from whatever, or whoever, comes next.

Rewilders simulates a movement sweeping the planet: rewilding vast regions by restoring damaged ecosystems and reintroducing keystone species like wolves, orangutans, koalas and tigers. On a deeper level, players connect wilderness areas by protecting or reintroducing apex predators. The ultimate goal is an ecosystem that needs little to no human management, because the right keystone species make it self-regulating, with near pre-human levels of biodiversity. That is the lesson the gameplay teaches: the world was transformed for humans, but nature is coming back.

Yes, you read that correctly. When platypuses aren’t busy building burrows and warding off foxes, they are scoping out the platypus dating scene. Live the platypus life you have always dreamed of, with romance, triumph and every awkward moment you can imagine, and learn about keystone conservation in the process.