rewilding is a first-person ecology simulation about our tenuous relationship with nature and how it’s bound to change in the future. Players step into the boots of Syd, a loner botanist, and enlist in a 200-year wasteland reforestation mission that will redefine their understanding of human habitat. 

Guided by their mandated AI companion Geva, Syd struggles to unpack what brought them so far away from society. Through the centuries, Syd and Geva work to interface with a recovering ecosystem and foster a new normal. As the world moves on without them, Syd will have to decide what to do when their assignment ends.

rewilding focuses on gameplay where plants are your main tools. Players choose plants based on their unique contributions to the overall ecosystem and work towards building a self-sustaining community of flora. As the years pass by, players will wander through a forest they helped design--a living, breathing entity all its own.

During each month that the player is in cryosleep, their labor is multiplied by the forces of time and nature as the environment organically evolves.

Upon exiting the dome, players will find that the environment has evolved in predictable but not entirely controllable ways. Regardless, players experience the beauty of the emergent plant relationships and behaviors they spent so much time carefully constructing.

At the core of the gameplay loop is a set of simple verbs designed to make interaction with such a complex simulation more manageable.

These verbs are:

planting • harvesting • collecting

Embodying Syd means getting up close and personal with the plants of Rewilding. One of the core philosophies of Rewilding is the idea of “getting your hands dirty”. To do this, players will leverage a variety of dynamic tools and techniques while establishing plantlife. Syd is not an RTS commander--they are a single person, and gameplay reflects that. Thankfully, their hard work is satisfying, rewarding, and, for the player, relaxing.

Plants are individual agents that take resources from the soil and convert them through natural processes. They spread, compete, share, and die.

Your goal is to listen - to understand the dynamics of your ecosystem, support the different plant populations, and solve problems that emerge as they compete for resources. Plants in Rewilding are more than just factories that change numbers, but living, organic beings that grow, reproduce, support and kill each other.

Players will plant a field of Wild Rye and realize they’re not getting enough moisture. In other games you might take out a watering can, but in Rewilding you’ll plant Buttercups as ground cover so the soil retains more water.

narrative

              

Rewilding tells the intimate story of Syd, a novice rewilder at Regeneration Corps (ReGen). Assigned to supervise their work and help translate the soil is Geva, a mandated AI companion who is also responsible for monitoring Syd’s health and happiness. As the two struggle to nurture a complex ecosystem, they uncover the history of their reforestation site and its previous stewards. Separated from any kind of community, the pair is torn between their desires of ethical restoration and the increasingly demanding whims of ReGen’s convoluted initiative.

The story is delivered to the player through conversations Syd has with Geva while they rewild, evoking the feeling of listening to a podcast while working. These conversations range from modular one-off topics to full fledged storylines that take place over long periods of time. The player doesn’t have dialogue options, rather the direction of the story is influenced by how and where the player plants, explores, and develops.