SimSpace is a set of pixel-art ecosystem simulations developed by me, inspired by the ecosystem dioramas in the 2000s nature encyclopedias I grew up with. Each one is a real place, modelled from the ground up, and each runs right in the browser on SimSpace, where you choose between them on a spinning globe. There are two so far: Atka Bay in Antarctica, and Brooks River in Alaska.

In both, every species is kept to scale with the others, and I looked into how each animal actually behaves and tried to give them as many of their characteristic behaviors as I could. Neither stops after a year: the seasons keep turning, year after year.

Atka Bay

Atka Bay follows an emperor penguin colony on the sea ice of the Antarctic coast. There are twenty-one species in total, including penguins, seals, seabirds, and the fish, squid, and krill that they all depend on. The emperors huddle together through the winter, the seals haul out onto the ice to rest, and the petrels come in from the sea during the summer.

The emperor penguin colony on the sea ice, with grey chicks standing among the adults and other adults lying on their bellies
The emperor colony, with chicks out among the adults.
A single file of penguins walking in across the sea ice from the ocean, with floes on the dark water behind them
A file of penguins walking in from the ocean.

The ice sheet also gains and recedes over the course of the year, which changes where the animals are able to go and what they are able to do.

Seals hauled out on two ice floes while emperor penguins porpoise through the water around them
Seals hauled out on floes as emperors porpoise past.
Open water with scattered floes and an iceberg, with seals, penguins and seabirds among them
Open water among the floes, with seals, penguins and seabirds.

Brooks River

Brooks River is a short, clear river between two lakes in Katmai National Park, best known for the brown bears that fish for sockeye at its falls. The simulation covers the whole river and the forest around it: spruce and birch, alder and willow, fireweed and twenty-two kinds of plant in all, and twenty-three animals so far, from the bears and the salmon to beavers, otters, foxes, moose, snowshoe hares, eagles, ducks and five kinds of fish.

Brown bears standing in the white water at the falls of Brooks River, with sockeye salmon in the current around them
Bears fishing at the falls as the sockeye run.
The river looping in tight meanders through willow and alder, with gravel bars inside each bend
The river looping through the willow flats.

The salmon run shapes the whole year. The sockeye come up from the lake in early summer, the bears gather at the falls to meet them, and the rainbows, grayling and char follow the spawning fish for their eggs. The rest of the river lives around it: the beavers cut willow and keep their lodge and dam, the foxes raise their kits and hunt voles and hares, and the moose browse the shallows.

The lower river running past a gravel bar grown with willow and sedge, with sockeye salmon in the current
Sockeye in the current past a willow-grown gravel bar.
A wide bend of the river, with gravel bars and willow along its inside edge and fireweed on the bank
A bend of the river, gravel and willow on its inside edge.
Spruce and birch forest with fireweed in flower around a small pond covered in lily pads
A lily pond in the birch and spruce.
Dense spruce forest with birch among it and fireweed flowering in the gaps
The spruce forest back from the river, with fireweed in the clearings.

The forest and the river change with the seasons as well. The leaves turn in the autumn, the snow comes in, and the river freezes over, so the animals have to change what they do: the bears go off to their dens, the beavers live under the ice on their store of branches, and the hares turn white.

The whole river from above in autumn, winding through spruce forest with the birch and willow turned gold
The whole river in autumn, the birch and willow gone gold.
Autumn forest with red and gold undergrowth, and a thermal camera panel showing the heat of a bird
In the autumn grass, the thermal camera picks out a warm body.

Field notebooks

Both also work as a game. Clicking on an animal for the first time takes a photo of it and adds it to a field notebook, along with the date you found it on. Some of the animals only show up during certain seasons, so finding them all takes some patience.

Play them on SimSpace.