The team behind the BAFTA-nominated Night Zookeeper has officially revealed Wilds – Night Zookeeper, a new creature creation and collection game that puts player creativity at the center of the experience. Launching later this year for PC and mobile devices, the game allows players to draw their own original creatures and watch them transform into fully playable 3D characters.
Rather than selecting from a library of pre-made monsters, Wilds encourages players to invent anything they can imagine. Whether it’s a banana hedgehog, a turtle fused with a race car, a three-eyed dragon, or a disco-loving llama, every hand-drawn creation becomes a unique Wild with its own appearance, personality, abilities, and combat style.
Set within the magical Night Zookeeper universe, players are tasked with restoring a world where creativity has been drained away. As they explore colorful environments, they’ll collect new Wilds, customize their abilities, decorate personal spaces, complete imaginative challenges, and battle mysterious shadow creatures known as the Voids that threaten to erase imagination from the Night Zoo.
Wilds is designed to make user-created content a core gameplay feature rather than a side activity. Players can discover and collect creatures designed by others, while community ideas may influence future updates by inspiring new Wilds, locations, items, attacks, and gameplay features.
Built on more than 15 years of Night Zookeeper’s work promoting creativity among children, the development team has already helped more than one million young creators write over one billion words through its educational platform. However, Wilds is designed first and foremost as a full-featured creature collection and customization game, offering strategic ability loadouts, experimentation, exploration, and progression while remaining welcoming to younger audiences and families.
Parents can also expect a safe online environment, as Wilds emphasizes creativity over social interaction with no live chat functionality.
Players interested in getting an early look at the game can wishlist Wilds – Night Zookeeper on Steam and register for future alpha playtests ahead of its PC and mobile launch later this year.