You can now play as a baby boar in Adorable Adventures

Wild Sheep Studio and publisher PQube have released Adorable Adventures for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The cozy exploration game puts players in control of Boris, a baby boar who gets separated from his family during a forest fire.

Usually, wild boars in video games exist purely to charge at you in the tutorial area until you learn the dodge mechanic. Here, the animal gets top billing in a low-stakes environment focused on tracking scents and filling out a sticker book. The narrator sets the tone immediately:

Say hello to Boris. He's a young, curious baby boar with an incredible sense of smell.

The game is rated E for Everyone and leans heavily into its wholesome aesthetic. You spend your time dashing through open fields, rooting around dense undergrowth, and splashing in riverbeds instead of fighting enemies.

Sniffing around the park

The core gameplay revolves around Boris's nose. Players press a button to visualize scent trails in the air. These paths lead to different plants, wildlife, and eventually, his six missing siblings. Boris sniffs out flora like yellow irises. This triggers an identification user interface and adds the discovery to a growing in-game journal.

As Boris finds more items, his sense of smell improves. This lets him filter out distracting odors like strong mushrooms and focus on specific quest trails. The world itself is based on the Cévennes National Park in southern France. The development team scanned local plants in 3D to build the game's environment, which ranges from rolling meadows to deep caves and rocky highlands. They also recorded ambient audio directly from the forest to create the background soundscape.

The progression system ties directly into finding the rest of the boar family. Each sibling has a specific personality and requires a light puzzle solution before they will join you. Once found, they open up new areas of the map and unlock side activities. These include time trials, photography challenges, and a side quest to solve a local mystery.

The game includes a human element as well. A park ranger named Maxime acts as a guide and narrator. Players unlock handwritten entries in Maxime's journal by collecting scents. The game also has an environmental message. Players are encouraged to pick up litter scattered around the park and drop it into recycling bins. Completing these tasks and finding secrets allows players to unlock various accessories to customize Boris's appearance.

Life after WiLD

The developer behind the game has an interesting history. Wild Sheep Studio is a twelve-person team based in Montpellier. They originally formed in 2013 to work on WiLD, an ambitious open-world survival game announced as a PlayStation 4 exclusive. That project was quietly canceled. The studio then restructured to focus on smaller indie titles.

This pivot from a massive Sony exclusive to a $20 cozy game about a piglet is a sharp turn, but it seems to have worked out. The team leaned into small animation details instead of massive scope. If players leave the controller alone, a butterfly will land on Boris's snout. When he climbs up ledges, his back legs struggle to pull his weight over the edge.

CEO Celine Tellier confirmed this is the team's first original completed game. It is a much smaller debut than they originally planned a decade ago. The scope is constrained to a few specific mechanics, but the end result is a finished product rather than a piece of vaporware. Sometimes scaling back is the only way to actually ship a video game.

The game costs $19.99 across all platforms. A free demo is available on Steam for anyone wanting to test the tracking mechanics before buying.