Back to Nature: Paint and Explore an Idyllic World in Toca Boca's Latest Game for iOS

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Toca Boca's iOS apps might be better described as toys than games. They specialize in providing the foundational elements of play and then letting their players loose without any further guidance, leading to a lineup of products that resemble dollhouses more than they resemble a lot of their fellow child-oriented apps. Their philosophy is clean and simple, with an up-front cost and absolutely no in-app purchases.

But even though Toca Boca's work is designed with kids in mind, you can still get a lot of joy out of them as an adult. For example, consider their latest: Toca Nature...

 

Toca Nature is a simple premise wrapped up in a low-poly, pastel-hued package. You'll start with a square of earth and from there you can raise the terrain into snow-capped mountains, lower it into clear ponds, and pepper the landscape with several different types of trees. Each of these tools will also add a different animal to your little patch of nature. Speckled bears will peek out from behind pine trees, while nervous wolves will descend from the hills. That's where the second part of Toca Nature comes into play.

Once you have a few critters scurrying about, you can zoom in and follow them around, or simply skim the landscape at ground level. You can gather food for the animals, or just watch them go about their lives throughout the game's day-night cycle.

And, of course, you can take pictures.

The game's built-in photography tool makes it pretty easy to take pictures, and it applies a slick-looking depth-of-field effect when you do. Though the lack of pitch control can make getting the perfect angle a bit tricky, it's practically impossible to mess your shots up too much.

Toca Boca also published a short video about the memories and feelings that inspired Toca Nature, and if you have any fond memories of camping or wandering outdoors as a child you'll almost certainly relate.

 

I'm very fond of Toca Boca's apps, even as an adult without the excuse of having a young child around to play with them. No in-app purchases, no exploitative or addictive mechanics, just interesting little toys that are entertaining all on their own. Toca Hair Salon 2 may be one of my favorite things to fiddle with on my phone when I just can't get to sleep, and I suspect that Toca Nature will join it.

You can pick up Toca Nature on the App Store now.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Love the papercraft style

[icecream]

Aaaaa this is super cute I hope it makes it to Android like some of their other apps soon.