Science & Tech
How nature is levelling up in video games, from playing as a raccoon to navigating ecological grief
When Pac-Man first began swerving pesky ghosts and devouring dots in mazes across the world in the early ‘80s, the idea that video games would evolve to anything more than fun arcade experiences was unimaginable. Yet today narrative-driven, interactive, and socially aware video games are all the rage — The Last of Us, Fallout, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners are all recent examples of the medium’s expanded reach in the cultural zeitgeist.
Beyond the reconsideration of the video game as an artform, one trend blooming across the screens of consoles and PCs is that nature is no longer just a prop, or background landscape; it’s the full-fledged focus.
As our planet falls into deeper environmental disasters, video games have begun reflecting this reality in their stories. By putting the control in the player’s hands, it has the potential to serve as a unique vehicle to greater awareness. These six games position nature, whether that’s wildlife, ecology or the changing seasons, as the main character.
This post-cyberpunk platform adventure game follows a stray ginger cat who after a steep fall from a pipe is separated from his pack of strays, finding himself in a city of robots, futuristic machinery and mutants.
Viral videos of people recording their cats’ reaction to the indie hit game took social media by storm. The game sold 2.5 million copies in the first month, earning BlueTwelve Studio a “game of the year” nomination at The Game Awards.
In a world where humans no longer exist and robots continue beyond them, our stray must use his wits, and puzzle-solving skills to traverse a decaying land lit by bright neon with his trusty drone sidekick, B-12. The game’s charm is getting to play as the cat, whether that’s following the main quest, knocking things over, or curling up on robots’ laps. To make this feel more real, BlueTwelve Studio motion-captured real cats, giving the game an extra layer of emotion and connectivity.
“It’s not wizards, it’s not football, it’s cats. And a stray cat living life on the streets at that, so I think that there is an opportunity there for awareness,” says Michael Sheldrake, realtor and social media cat-focused streamer with a half-million following.
Sheldrake, who is on the board of directors at VOKRA, a Vancouver-based non-profit cat rescue, identifies another type of experience unique to Stray.
“It scratches an itch which I find is common in my following: there’s a lot of people out there who love cats, but can’t have a cat,” Sheldrake says. “They have an allergy, or they live in a rental situation where the cats aren’t allowed — which I find to be unfortunate being in cat rescue and as a realtor — so I think games like Stray can help people enjoy a bit of that.”
It’s rather a simple premise — be a raccoon and knock over as much garbage in the streets of Toronto as possible. Featuring imported map data to create authentic Toronto neighbourhoods, Trash Panda offers a chance to see life from the inside of a bin.
A culmination of a lifetime fascination with the bandit-eyed animal for Jason Leaver, creator of Trash Panda, began on camping outings with his family as a young boy.
“I just loved them, I don’t think I understood at that age why I liked them so much, but I think it was the very anthropomorphic hands, and the thumbs, just the way they move. I mean no one can look at a raccoon and say they’re not adorable,” he says.
“Even my daughter, she gets the most excited about raccoons,” says Leaver. “My daughter and I will often go out and play detective with ‘what tracks are these? You know this looks like a dog, this looks like a fox — and nope, it’s raccoons.’
Leaver had his lightbulb moment as he was taking out the garbage one night.
“It was garbage night and I just thought, now what if you play as the raccoon, and your job is to be a nuisance, to make a mess. And that seemed like a lot of fun so I just started experimenting with that idea,” says Leaver, whose primary trade is filmmaking.
The Scarborough resident’s experiment took three years to complete, resulting in Trash Panda.
“The onus of the storytelling on the player. Because they’re inhabiting the world, their own personality comes through, for a friend of mine it was about moving all the bins together, and trying to create a sculpture out of them,” Leaver says. “Why was his raccoon building a pyramid of trash bins? I don’t know, but he knew — that was the story that he was telling. So ultimately, you know, the game did become a tool for the players to tell stories.”
Leaver sees storytelling and nature as a focus for his upcoming projects.
“That was my one regret about Trash Panda is I wasn’t able to figure out a way to tell a story, but with the games moving forward, I’m very much thinking about story. Whatever my next game is, nature will be a big part of it as well.”
Montreal indie studio Scavengers Studio’s second game, released in January 2023, tells the story of Estelle, a young woman on a monumental journey as she captures a dying reality.
Armed with a tape recorder, polaroid camera and a strong curiosity for the world outside her home of Caro Village, Estelle leaves everything behind to journal the changing of the season — a narrative event set to bring the world to an uncertain fate.
The somber yet comforting narrative-exploration game is in many ways a reflection of our struggles, as the environment shifts and morphs into an unrecognizable state with each passing year.
“While SEASON: A letter to the future is set in a fictional world, it draws parallels to our reality,” says Amélie Lamarche, co-founder and CEO at Scavengers Studio. “The narrative reflects a sense of transition, mirroring contemporary concerns about environmental changes and societal shifts. The game’s focus on documenting and preserving memories serves as a subtle commentary on the importance of cherishing and protecting the fleeting moments in our own world.”
Taking its players across villages, remote temples, and speaking to a varied cast of characters, SEASON: A letter to the future is a game that lives and dies by its environment. As Estelle pedals her bicycle, the player is greeted with the sounds of calm winds and birds softly chirping. The game is in no rush, encouraging the player to bask in all that it presents.
It would be a tall task to find solace in a reality as dire as that of the gibbon — with most gibbon species regarded as endangered or critically endangered, and their habitats under constant attack. Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is not a remedy to the real ecological tragedy, but a gentle flicker, a reminder of the power of art to direct audiences’ attention to what is often ignored.
Austrian indie studio Broken Rules’ endless-runner game follows the lives of a loving family of three gibbons, as the player masters a movement-based control system. There’s a sense of beauty and exploration that creeps up as you swing and slide around the colourful jungle. The gibbons can at times chain dynamic movements together — much like the lifelong bonds between gibbons in real life.
Poachers at your heels, environmental destruction, and displacement all make their way to the gibbons, a bleak reality that makes itself more apparent once the family is tragically separated. The game becomes more challenging as the world changes: fires engulf the environment, with fewer trees to swing around on, and loud city construction replaces the calm beauty of the jungle.
Eddy Boxerman of Nelson, B.C., who acted as movement designer and main physics programmer for the game, was not too familiar with gibbons before he began work on the game.
“The way that gibbons kind of swing arm to arm through the jungle, it’s a unique mode of locomotion that gibbons employ, and getting into the physics of that and trying to get that working — having a nice, smooth movement [was] research-heavy.”
The ecological message, although not dominant at first, is something Boxerman saw grow among the team’s focus as production went along.
“I would say we probably all had at heart, an ecological sense,” Boxerman says. “The more we worked on the project, when we were prototyping and learning about gibbons and their environment, the more we started to get invested … in the gibbon story.”
“It was a mixture of fascination, wonder and a little heartbreaking,” he says. “Slowly learning about all the threats and dangers they face, sympathizing with them, wanting to help,” he says. “The fact that they mate for life and the different family dynamics among gibbons — it was touching.”
Empire of The Ants is a real-time strategy game, developed by French studio Five Tower, released in November 2024 on all consoles and PC. A remake of the 2000 game of the same name, the game transports the player into the unique inner-world of an ant colony as you take control of a young female ant by the name of 103,683rd. Build alliances, wrestle with the social intrigues, such as the option for war or diplomacy and stabilize resources for the queens and mothers of your hive.
The level of detail is what impressed Albert Tomchyshyn, graduate student in environmental geography at the University of Toronto at first glance, although the gameplay presented a potential steep learning curb.
“My first impression from what I’ve seen of Empire of the Ants is they’re [the ants] anatomically correct. And I think they are highly based off of ants that actually exist in the wild, which is a plus for me,” Tomchyshyn says. “They’ve got a lot of good things going, I think it’s fascinating.”
As the secretary of the Toronto Entomologists Association, a passion for ants has been life-long for Tomchyshyn.
“I think ants have a lot of potential in the video gaming market, because of the diverse and varied species,” he says. “They have many different phenotypes in that specific species — a phenotype meaning they have the same genetics, however, those genes are expressed differently — and so you get soldier ants, or you get their repletes, which store the food of the colony inside their abdomen.”
Amidst the overwhelming darkness of a blackout, which brought their hyper-technologized city to a sudden halt, the main character sees a light, a light that acts as a guide to the outskirts of the city. As the adventure progresses, they come to a realization — the real devastation was not just the blackout, but something more.
The themes of darkness and light wound through the game are not just physical obstacles, but symbolize the emotions of ecological grief that many are experiencing in the current moment. As we observe the main character’s journey, much like someone waking up to the realization of climate change, the true depth of destruction around them becomes clear. Outside the city, wildfires rage, foes and obstacles all present themselves in front of our hero: the point of no return. Stefania Maggi, psychology professor at Carleton University and developer, hopes Kibou: the guiding light, which is currently at the demo stage, will support growing ecological consciousness.
“They learn things about themselves, and the primary lessons are about emotions that relate to climate change, emotions like anxiety, ecological grief, but also hope, motivation and how these can coexist with feeling desperate and hopeless,” Maggi says. “We are kind of dramatizing a moment in which someone realizes ‘wow, climate change is real.’”
The game hopes to push the idea of interconnectedness, and that themes such as eco-anxiety, which can be isolating, are an opportunity to bring people together through a shared call to action.
Although Maggi never grew up with video games, she sees a real potential to tell important and relevant stories through the medium.
“Today is a completely different world,” Maggi says. “I thought it was really important to find a way to connect with young people and try to engage them with the important topic — and video games was a really important venue to be able to do that.”
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