Games that dig deeper and explore how we’re all part of a larger living thing.

One of most profound ways for games to Forge Emotional Bonds with Nature is to entangle them in an ecosystem where everything is connected to everything else. This doesn’t necessarily have to be mechanically true (creating deeply connected worlds is notoriously difficult), but the feeling is what we’re after here.

In The Guardian of Nature, the player character is shrunk down so he can explore underground ecosystems and fungal networks, forming a web that ties the forest together into one big organism. Going underground is a fantastic way of achieving a sense of awe as most players are unaware of the incredible microbial ecosystems that lurk there, telling so much of the story of how most ecosystems on Earth actually survive and fit together. It’s basically hard to experience the soil from inside and not come away with a deep sense that not only is it all connected, the macro and the micro, but it connects all the way back to you, the player.

Ultros works a similar theme. Although its ecosystem is thoroughly alien and lives on board a space station, it uses game mechanics to coax the player into experiencing the whole, the organism that encompasses all others. While soil is important in Ultros as well and the game does eventually let you dig around and explore it, in this ecosystem the metaphorical fungal network actually exists above ground in the shape of an airborne telepathic “Living Network”. This feature lets the player plant trees and flowers and then essentially draw paths for pollinators between them, eventually turning the entire game world into one interconnected garden. As the boundaries break down between one plant and another, one garden and another, the network grows to encompass creatures and characters. It gets harder and harder for the player to think of themselves as an individual agent, and easier to imagine begin a small part of a larger living thing. To emphasize this through narrative, in one optional story, three estranged sisters are reunited through the network and in realizing their own smallness, overcome their fear of death.

This use case could be considered a step deeper than In Awe of Nature. It similarly make players feel small, but the sublime impression comes from the intricacy of the web of life and not its sheer scale or beauty.