Wolf Quest

WolfQuest is an educational computer game created by the Minnesota Zoo and Eduweb, designed to raise awareness about wolves. It is the first game to have received a grant from the National Science Foundation.

You play the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone, from finding a mate and establishing your own territory, to raising your own pups. Along the way you are free to hunt (including on a cattle ranch outside the park if you're willing to risk it), interact with other wolves, and chase coyotes and bears.

There is also a multi-player section where up to five people can connect to create their own pack.

Tropes used in Wolf Quest include:

• Always Over the Shoulder: The main camera setting.
• Beating a Dead Player: Bears will continue to attack your wolf once they have killed him.
• Camera Lock On:
  • You can lock on to prey, coyotes, and bears.
  • A full-screen lock-on occurs when your pups are in danger from a specific predator - can be skipped by the player.
• Camera Screw: Can happen sometimes. Especially with the Head Cam, which isn't "officially" part of the game since it was so glitchy, but which they decided to leave for those who don't mind the glitchiness.
• Character Customization / Digital Avatar: You design your wolf by picking from five pelt colors and moving the sliders to adjust the hue, and you also choose how to balance your wolf's strength, stamina, and speed.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: To portray the way a wolf can scent things, we have "Scent View": the screen is grayscale (or not, with older or integrated graphics cards) with a different color for each type of scent: Purple/pink for elk (with a more reddish tint for the bull elk), green for coyotes, yellow for wolf territory markers, blue for bears, and orange for hares.
• Direct Continuous Levels
• Drop-In Drop-Out Multiplayer
• Escort Mission: The final one - taking your pups to the rendezvous point.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Played straight originally, as a bear could kill you in about three hits, but now averted, since all bears run away when you get close enough (except for the one in the Protect the Pups mission.)
• Experience Points: Earned by killing things, interacting with enemy wolves, and marking territory. Will earn you things such as a bonus den choice, one of your pups being pure white, the ability to name your pups, or making it easier to mark territory.
• Fast Forward Mechanic: You have the option to make your wolf sleep until a different time of day.
• Free Rotating Camera: You have the option of rotating the camera if you wish.
• Freeware Games
• Game Breaking Bug:
  • In a pre-Deluxe version of Amethyst Mountain, the infamous "Circles" glitch in Multi-player happened frequently: all players' wolves would suddenly stop moving properly - they would either walk slowly in a perfectly straight line (unable to turn), or run in circles. The only way to fix this was leaving the Multi-player game.
• Howling to the Night and Wolves Always Howl At the Moon: Originally inverted - before Slough Creek Deluxe came out and nearly the entire game was just "daytime", players could make their wolf howl at any time, except the nighttime cattle ranch mission. Now that we have different times, players can howl at whatever time of day they want, including night.
• HUD: Contains your wolf's four meters (Life Meter, Stamina Meter, Pack Affinity Meter, and Territory Security Meter), your mate and pups' Life Meters, how much food you are carrying for your pups, and a compass that also shows where nearby wolf territories and elk hunting ground are.
• Idle Animation: Your wolf will eventually sit down and... lick. Your wolf's mate always remains standing, but will occasionally wag its tail. Pups may bow down in the "let's play" posture, among other things.
• In-Universe Game Clock: When your wolf sleeps, you can plan what time to wake up in. This is really just an aesthetic thing, not affecting gameplay.
• Invisible Walls
• Killed Off for Real: Pups.
• Mighty Roar: Bears.
• Mook Bouncer: Enter the southern territory when trying to bring your pups to the summer rendezvous point, and one of their pack's wolves will run up to you and you'll be teleported outside their territory, usually a considerable distance toward the direction opposite the one you're trying to go.
• The Nose Knows: Scent View.
• Power-Up Motif: There is a little chime in Multi-player when players successfully complete a Pack Rally to get a temporary strength bonus.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: While you can choose to be male or female, the only thing that this affects in-game is your wolf's size (males are larger than females) and which gender dispersal you need to find to be your mate. The gameplay itself is completely the same whether you choose male or female.
• Respawn Point: A short distance away from where you died.
• Save Point: Any time except when a stranger wolf is nearby (this is due to the fact that many glitches were caused by saving in or near a social arena).
• Shown Their Work: The game realistically portrays a wolf's life. The game areas are based directly off real areas in Yellowstone - right down to small ponds and a dead lightning-struck tree.
• Skybox: Has different ones for Amethyst Mountain, Slough Creek (winter), Sloud Creek (spring), and the cattle ranch. The first three each have four different skyboxes for the four times of day.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The golden eagle. No matter how many times you chase it away, it will come back.
• Variable Mix: There's several different music tracks for just exploring and gameplay in general, but there are specific ones for hunting, interactions with stranger wolves, and being near angry bears.
• Video Game Geography: Type 1, of the flat and rectangular variety. With Invisible Walls.
• Wild Wilderness: Justified Trope, seeing as it's in Yellowstone.