''Wild Earth'' is a safari video game and motion simulator ride by Super X Studios. The player photographs 30 types of animals as a photojournalist in Serengeti National Park. It was first released as an online video game in France on March 17, 2006, and in North America on April 24, 2006.

Akella Akella (russian: Акелла) was a Russian software company specializing in the development, publishing and distribution of video games and multimedia products. The founders of Akella met in 1993 and decided to start a company together, and ...

published the game for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

as ''Safari Photo Africa: Wild Earth'' on September 18, 2006, and Ubisoft published it as ''Wild Earth: Photo Safari'' in November 2006, while

Xplosiv Empire Interactive was a British video game developer and publisher based in London. Founded in 1987 by Ian Higgins and Simon Jeffrey, it was acquired by Silverstar Holdings in 2006 and went out of business in 2009. History Empire Interacti ...

published it as ''Wild Earth: Africa'' on April 5, 2007. Majesco later published a

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

version, ''Wild Earth: African Safari'', in 2008. The game was also installed as a motion simulator ride in multiple American zoos. It won several awards including the grand prize at the 2003 Independent Games Festival.

Gameplay

''Wild Earth'' is a safari video game in which players explore and photograph African safari environments. The player acts as a photojournalist in Serengeti National Park and is set to photograph 30 different types of animals, from hyenas to rhinoceroses. In the Wii version, the controller rumbles when the player strays too close to the animals, which affects the camera's steadiness. The game was also installed as a motion simulation ride at zoos including the Philadelphia Zoo, Zoo Miami, and San Diego Zoo.

Development

Super X, an indie developer based in Seattle, built ''Wild Earth'' for release on

and supposedly Xbox, before the latter version was later canceled in 2005 or early 2006. The team won the game design innovation, visual art innovation, and grand prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2003. They had previously worked on Far Gate, which won the audience award at the same festival in 2000. In December 2005, ''Wild Earth''s production was complete but Super X ended its agreement with British publisher Digital Jesters when the latter was being restructured. The game was released as an online video game in 2006. Russian game developer

published the game for release on September 18, 2006. A bit later, Super X announced that Ubisoft would publish the game. They released the game a week later, on November 16, 2006. A later agreement with

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

and Animal Planet brought the game to Europe, where it was published by

on April 5, 2007. In 2008, Majesco announced a related and

-exclusive version of the title, ''Wild Earth: African Safari''. On March 23, 2022, the game was re-released on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

as ''Wild Earth - Africa''.

Reception

The game received "mixed or average reviews" on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

References

External links

* * * {{Portal bar, Video games 2006 video games Akella games Cancelled Xbox games Empire Interactive games Independent Games Festival winners Indie games Majesco Entertainment games Photography games Seumas McNally Grand Prize winners Single-player video games Ubisoft games Video games developed in the United States Windows games Wii games