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As an urban-dwelling, ground-walking human it’s not easy to imagine what it feels like to be a gibbon swinging through a rainforest full of tropical birds and wildlife, but in the sublime Gibbon: Beyond the Trees I got a thrilling taste.

Vienna-based indie studio Broken Rules has created a gorgeously-drawn and lovingly-crafted game that effortlessly weaves in a profound point of view that lingers long after you’re done playing it.

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You are a gibbon, living in your natural habitat of the Southeast Asian jungle with your gibbon partner and child. You swing through the trees, slide down branches, and leap through the air, trying to gain speed. This movement, which is known as brachiation, based on the way real apes swing through the trees, feels fantastic, and the rhythm and flow of this reminded me of the iOS classic Tiny Wings. But Gibbon expands on this core by looking and sounding incredible.

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Its hand-painted visuals are vibrant, painterly, and evocative, providing a feast of backdrops including different jungle types and moving through day and night. Its vivid jungle noises are also a textural joy – with a variety of bird whistles, tree-top fizzles, and gibbon calls sounding out over a score that changes thematically as the game progresses. It was simultaneously soothing and stimulating.

Broken Rules’ game was made with the consultation and help of the people native to the places Gibbon is set in, and this cultural specificity shows, especially in the dwellings and markets of the humans in the game. As you progress, things become gradually harder as the distances between the trees start to grow. Here the game starts to elevate, becoming something charged and more significant.

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Trees begin to grow fewer, your gibbon starts to spend more time on the ground, and wildlife becomes sparser. Telling a story about deforestation could be heavy-handed, but the game employs this story organically, making it a part of its increasing difficulty. Of course it’s harder to be a gibbon swinging through a jungle if there are fewer trees.

The game’s story uses this tale of human development as well as a plot around poaching. Early on, signs of human encroachment are subtle, with simple wooden huts, before steadily expanding as nature is replaced by urban environments. Fire devastates the gibbon’s habitat as forest is cleared for palm oil development. Written out, this may sound heavy (if you consider reality ‘too heavy’) but the greatness of this relatively simple game, with its core mechanic of swinging through the trees, is that it imparts this tale so movingly. I became more like a gibbon, and if that isn’t effective fiction, then tell me what is.

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However, there is an important criticism to be made here. While Westerners who play this game may very well empathise with gibbons and the environments in which they live, I worry that it encourages the mindset that this is a far-away problem. While jungles and tropical rainforests are cleared in countries that are still developing, it’s important to also ask where our local natural habitats have gone. For example, in the UK, where are all our British forests?

It may sound like a funny question, but this is only because many British forests were cleared long ago, as the UK developed, and farmland expanded. Western nature documentaries like to show beautiful tropical wildlife scenes intercut with forest clearings in countries that are poorer than the West – which are already developed – while the implicit question was rarely turned around: Could we in the West save our own forests, wildflower meadows, rivers, and lakes, and reduce our consumption of the very products these developing countries are incentivized to produce?

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All this may be too much for a game such as Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, which I must emphasise is a wonderful artistic achievement. I only hope that those who play it can consider what actions they can take to protect not only gibbons but the wildlife that exists in their local area. At the end of the game, Gibbon provides a handy list of charities and organisations that are helping to protect the animal and its habitat.

The game doesn’t overstay its welcome – in fact, it could be considered too short and I would’ve loved more of the earlier, flowy levels, where the gibbon simply swung through an alive and dynamic forest, which was full of lovely sights and sounds such as sunsets and waterfalls. A full playthrough can be completed in an hour or so, but Gibbon does encourage re-plays through an additional character, collectibles, as well as just the fact that it’s so lovely to look at. Controller support is also available should that be your preference, but the touchscreen controls are well optimised considering the game’s status as an Apple Arcade exclusive.

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is available exclusively on Apple Arcade, and will launch on Nintendo Switch and PC later in the year. Code was provided.

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