"Along Ripples" is a game with a great concept: a management tycoon game that saves the world instead of exploiting it. Your job is to save the impaired freshwater ecosystems of northern Europe. This may not be the sexiest idea, but if you ask your middle school environmental science teacher, it's actually the sexiest. In this game, you and a team of field scientists must release creatures like dace, perch, pike, otters, ducks, and my personal favorite, crayfish, into the lake. (Nothing scared me more than when I was a kid wading in a creek and suddenly there were mudskippers scurrying around.

Be that as it may, here's a game. You must manage the oxygen, nutrients, and pollution levels in a lake so that the animals can live. As you build a pyramid of species that depend on each other, their needs become more complex. Martin Grape is CEO of Eat Create Sleep, developer of Among Ripples. He says, "I can explain to you in a minute, face to face, that predators keep their prey in check. Grapes' studio worked closely with ecologists to create a game that is not only scientifically correct, but also fun to play. The real world is based on systemic relationships, and the natural world is like a giant emergent sandbox. Essentially, we see each animal as a unit in an RTS game. We ask ecologists how each animal functions and how it relates to other animals, and that informs our play."

Among Ripples has a short demo available on Steam, and the Kickstarter campaign ends March 20. Release is scheduled for 2021. Anyway, here's a video about Pike: [5