You can help save the whales by buying this reef-building game written by the scribe of the Tomb Raider reboot

7 hours ago 2

A pair of blue merpeople stand on either side of a thorny coral structure in Life Below.

If you're a fan of city-builders, Life Below should already be on your radar. It's a very different take on the art of metropolis construction that swaps out the tenements and skyscrapers of your standard SimCity-likes for constructing glittering coral reefs as you attempt to revive collapsing marine ecosystems. It looks utterly beautiful, is developed with input from actual marine biologists, and has a story written by Rhianna Pratchett, whose other credits include Mirror's Edge and the excellent 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider.

It's a game with a worthy message, but developer Megapop has now made it so that Life Below can have a more direct impact on the precarious existence of the environments it portrays. Megapop has teamed up with the nonprofit organisation Whale and Dolphin Conservation to release a special supporter pack for the game that will help support the life of marine mammals.

The charity pack adds three new species to Life Below who will visit your restored reefs, namely the common bottlenose dolphin, the Atlantic spotted dolphin, and the harbour porpoise. You can watch them frolic around your corals and learn more about each species through an in-game guidebook which Megapop says is "inspired by real marine biology."

Life Below - Official Gameplay Trailer - YouTube

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The optional pack will cost $5 (£4.50), when it launches, with 100% of net revenue from the pack going straight to supporting Whale and Dolphin Conservation's work. The base game itself will cost $30 (£25) on launch.

Of course, a game having a positive message doesn't guarantee it will be great to play. But Justin Wagner took a dip into Life Below's crystalline waters last year, and came away pretty taken with its unusual approach to city-building. "It's hard to tell without a full gamut of zones how deep the city simulation goes, but the foundations are there for a robust, quirky take on the genre." And if you need further convincing, you can try out the game yourself through its Steam demo.

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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