10 Games With The Most Dynamic Wildlife

For many games, getting to experience the natural world around you is the most rewarding experience that can be offered. From vast deserts to forests and valleys, games can let you experience the world in many ways you never would otherwise.

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A pretty major part of the natural world is wildlife and all of those creatures that witness the world in all its glory in every moment of their lives. Games let you get close to these creatures, see life how they do, and maybe even show how humans could form a closer life with them, too.

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10

Planet Zoo

So a zoo might not be the closest example of experiencing the world naturally, but Planet Zoo lets you witness a great variety of the world’s many animals. True enough, zoos may not always have the best interests of animals at heart, but this is your zoo, and you can make sure it’s all for the animals.

Now getting to see animals in something reminiscent of their natural habitat can be pretty cool, but animals by nature want to be free. And well, they sure will try. In a zoo with plenty of viewers, you might not want your lion escaping to cause havoc. Unless that’s why you built the zoo. In which case…congrats?

9

Breath Of The Wild

Open world games are pretty popular for a number of reasons. Being given the chance to explore a massive area at your own pace and take in the nature of it in a free and unique way can be tantalizing, and Breath of the Wild is a great example of that.

With most of civilization in ruins, nature has taken over once more. Wild horses gallop across the fields, rabbits hop about forests, snowy bears hide deep in the mountains and fish swim the streams. There’s rarely a moment in Breath of the Wild when wildlife isn’t surrounding you, running from your presence or hunting you down. At least you can mount most of them.

8

Abzu

An argument could be made that fish aren’t wildlife per se and instead marine life, but we won’t be the ones making that argument today, because the underwater world is entrancing. Abzu is a wonderful showcase of the world beneath our feet. It’s a calm game, one that simply wants you to celebrate the ocean.

Abzu is short but offers you plenty of moments to simply sit and rest, and contemplate the life around you. The little guppies dashing through the seaweed in schools, the bigger creatures that go from a light drift to a lunge in an instant to eat its meal. The dolphins that join you, piercing the water’s edge as you swim above. It’s a quiet beauty, a land mostly untouched.

7

Pokémon

For a series with close to 1000 creatures, you’d have thought it would be a bit more dynamic. In the early days, you’d find the odd Snorlax blocking a road or some Pokemon by their trainers, but you never really saw the wild ones, they were hidden away until battle. With Sun and Moon, they appeared more prevalently, but were still pretty limited.

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Thanks to Legends Arceus, Pokemon are finally, truly in their natural habitat. You’re the oddity now, the invisible creature hiding in the Tall Grass. They run about by themselves or in packs, chatting to themselves, or some even flocking towards you in curiosity, while just as many have no problem mowing you down.

6

Spore

What game could really be a better candidate for dynamic wildlife than a game all about evolution itself? Spore was something of an odd game at release, planned to be a halfway educational tool in evolution, but was really a glorified creature creator with some strategy elements thrown in.

Exploring a world from the beginning of time, seeing other races continually evolve around you from simple amoebae to land-dwelling lifeforms to eventually forming societies is a rewarding experience. Sure, plenty of them look like walking (or sometimes flying) atrocities, but evolution is pretty damn dynamic.

5

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar is well-renowned at this stage for its open-world games. For the longest time, Grand Theft Auto was their premier open-world experience, mass city simulations of people, but with limited countryside, and by extension limited animals. Then Red Dead Redemption came along.

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The first Red Dead Redemption had tons of animals to flesh out the areas in between, but the wildlife in the sequel is something else entirely. Catalogs of real animals, from the smallest rodent to the biggest elk and everything in between, the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 will massacre you.

4

Horizon Zero Dawn

Once again, it might be daring to call the machines of Horizon wildlife, especially seeing as there are actual rabbits and turkeys running around, but then the machines are designed to emulate real animals, so I think it’s fair game. In that regard, Horizon is teeming with wildlife, some a bit wilder than others.

There are plenty of machines that exist just to annihilate you, like the Thunderjaw and aptly-named Ravager. But then there’s the Grazers, tilling the ground and running so smoothly in their packs at the slightest sound. Or the Glinthawks, coming in to scavenge the remains of machines to bring back to their nests. All in memory of their predecessors.

3

The Last Guardian

Trico may be the only wildlife present in (most) of the game, but by all means, are they dynamic. In fact, that dynamicism is central to the experience of the whole game. You are just a small little human beholden to this gigantic chimeric beast, this wondrous gentle giant. Trico is lonely, and not the best for taking commands.

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Throughout the game, Trico is needed to navigate and solve puzzles. But they don’t always understand. It might seem like the game is janky, or their AI is off. But they’re also an animal that’s never seen a human so they just need patience. Trico has fears of their own, and just how well you treat them may have them overgrow their fears at critical moments.

2

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

I mean it’s all in the name here really. In all seriousness, Alba is a game that takes its message seriously. You can experience a glorious world here, a Mediterranean island filled with countless animals for you to catalog and care for, all at your own pace, so you can enjoy the island’s natural wonder.

It’s also an island in danger of human pollution, and the animals at risk by extension. It’s all well and good to see these beautiful animals in a game, but it’s no good if they’re gone from reality, and maybe this game is the spark to see that perspective. Plus every download of the game plants a tree, which is just another positive!

1

Monster Hunter

Bit of a double-edged sword here. Monster Hunter is a long-running series, each of its monsters wonderfully curated to exist naturally in the habitats of the games, having wonderful unique interaction with the world around them. But then again, you’re hunting them, which isn’t exactly the greatest way to appreciate life.

Thankfully, the Monster Hunter games let you capture monsters too, all with the intent to study and release, never to keep locked away or experiment on. And seeing these monsters react to the world around them, leaving trails, washing themselves in waterfalls, and stealing eggs is wondrous, not to mention how dynamic the fights between them all are.

Animal Crossing

Hm, maybe this isn’t the fairest to call wildlife. Tom Nook might be a capitalist monster, but can he truly be called wildlife? And Isabelle, that wonderfully civilized dog, wildlife? Nothing of the sort! The folks of Animal Crossing are animals, true, but far from wild!

Why, they’ve built whole towns, terraformed landscapes, and set up shops. I’ve not seen wildlife do that before, not yet anyway, and I do hope it stays that way. But I suppose setting up towns of your own is one way for animals to reclaim their natural habitat. So no, far from wild I suppose, but by all means, is this little community dynamic.

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