I Want a Rewilding Game

July 2, 2023

I want a Rollercoaster Tycoon/Satisfactory/Zoo Tycoon-type game about rehabbing and managing wild land. Like you're in charge of the park ranger service at a national park or something, and you start with a newly acquired wild area that's been mismanaged or neglected. Like you're trying to re-introduce biodiversity back to lumber land, turn an air-seeded forest into something that can develop past its plateau so that it's healthier, re-wild a river or wetlands...all sorts of stuff!

And then you have to balance doing right by your wildlands with managing tourists as well--providing hiking, biking, and even horse trails, camping, parking, waste removal, etc. And you have a feedback system, and some of the requests are valid, but others are complete and total ass-hattery like those, "Just a bunch of rocks," reviews that went viral for some national parks a few years ago. And like, for the forest management, you need to fell trees sometimes, and people would complain about that because they mean well, but don't have the craft to understand that you need to do that for the health of the forest and to keep the trees from choking each other out of resources.

Anyway, I've been on a "learning about rewilding" kick this week, and we just drove through a forest managed by the parks service so I'm seeing it with new eyes and wondering about the management approach.