The University of Stirling has teamed up with Edinburgh-based studio Glitchers to launch Restore, a new browser-based video game designed to give players a hands-on experience with environmental restoration while contributing to critical real-world research. The release of Restore highlights how video games can powerfully support real-world tasks and research into global challenges like biodiversity loss and pandemic prevention.
In Restore, players step into the shoes of an agriculturalist or arborist, managing land and forest regeneration while balancing the economic and ecological impacts of their decisions. Players face dynamic choices – such as whether to cultivate land for settlements or regenerate forests.
This creates complex trade-offs. While increased restoration efforts can initially heighten pandemic risk, fully restored landscapes ultimately become resilient to disease, offering insight into the delicate balance between nature and health.
Commissioned as part of the RESTOREID initiative, a European-funded research project led by the University of Stirling, Restore serves both as an educational platform and a data-gathering tool. RESTOREID explores the intersections of ecosystem restoration, biodiversity, and infectious disease risk, generating data to inform policies and practical guidelines for healthier, disease-resistant landscapes.
In Restore, players’ anonymised decisions are gathered to study human priorities in ecological scenarios, providing valuable insights into the choices being made that shape restoration projects on a global scale.
Dr. Brad Duthie, Lecturer in Environmental Modelling at Stirling, explains:
Restore applies ecological knowledge to in-game simulated environments, within which player decisions are made on landscape restoration under different scenarios.Â
“As well as being fun to play, the game educates players on restoration while giving us a better understanding of the factors driving the restoration process.
“Data generated by the game, which are anonymised during collection, will allow us to learn about how people prioritise different decisions in restoration.
Professor Nils Bunnefeld, a partner in RESTOREID, added:
The RESTOREID project is an exciting opportunity to make the voices of many people heard through their decisions in the game, and collect data on opinions from people that are often hard to reach.
Crafted by Glitchers, Restore stands out as a meaningful gaming experience that challenges players to consider the ecosystem’s complexities, where every choice has consequences.
Maxwell Scott-Slade, Game Director at Glitchers, told the Scottish Games Network:
The game will give users the chance to shape the world they want to create, but the ecosystem is delicate, and every decision has ripple effects, much like in real-world ecosystems. Users must look out for unexpected consequences in this simplified environmental scenario, such as disease which can lead to a cull of livestock.
We hope people will enjoy taking on the roles and cultivating the land in whatever way they choose.
Restore is free to play, with no downloads or registration required, making it an accessible and immediate resource for anyone interested in learning about restoration, biodiversity, and the role of ecosystem health in disease prevention.
Play Restore now and experience the future of games for research and restoration.