The team behind the BAFTA-nominated children’s creativity platform Night Zookeeper has announced Wilds, a new creature-collecting multiplayer game built around players designing their own creatures rather than choosing from a preset roster. Players watch their drawings come to life in 3D and take them into battles and other shared game modes.
Author, Don’t Assemble
Wilds is built around the idea that players should create their own characters rather than choose from creatures someone else has made. A drawing can become a banana hedgehog, a turtle car, a three-eyed dragon, a disco llama, or something no one else has imagined before. Once created, each Wild is brought into the game as a 3D character with its own look, abilities, attacks, and personality.
Rebuilding a World Drained of Imagination
Set in the magical universe of Night Zookeeper, Wilds challenges players to help rebuild a world where imagination has been drained away. Players create and collect Wilds, customize their abilities, build out their spaces, take on challenges, and fight back against grey, shadowy Voids that threaten to erase creativity from the Night Zoo. Player-made Wilds can be collected by others, and community ideas have the potential to inspire future creatures, items, attacks, locations, and game features.
“Wilds is about taking the feeling of drawing a character as a kid and asking what would happen if that character could come to life in the game,” said Josh Davidson at Night Zookeeper. “We want players to author the creatures, share ideas, and help shape the identity of the world itself from day one.”
Built on 15 Years With Children and Creativity
Wilds builds on more than 15 years of Night Zookeeper’s work with children and creativity. The BAFTA-nominated team has helped more than 1 million children create stories and characters, with over 1 billion words written through its platform. The wider Night Zookeeper universe has also expanded into books, an animated series, and a global creative community shaped by children’s ideas. Night Zookeeper says Wilds is designed as a safe creative space with no live chat.
Key Features
- Draw Your Own Wilds: Design original creatures and watch them come to life as playable 3D characters.
- Author, Don’t Assemble: Invent creatures from scratch rather than combining preset parts.
- Creature Collection With Personal Meaning: Collect Wilds created by other players and build a roster of community-made characters.
- Strategic Customisation: Experiment with abilities, attacks, and loadouts to make each Wild useful in different challenges.
- A World Built With the Community: Player ideas can inspire future items, outfits, creatures, locations, attacks, and features.
- Safe Creative Play: Made by the BAFTA-nominated creators of Night Zookeeper, with no live chat.
Availability
Wilds by Night Zookeeper releases on PC and mobile later this year. Players can wishlist the game on Steam now and sign up at wildsgame.com for news, updates, and Alpha playtest opportunities.
