Game Developers Explain How They Handle Sensitive Depictions of Animal Harm and Death
Even with cartoonish visuals, adults and children have emotional and irrational reactions to animals being harmed that developers have to keep in mind.

The umpteenth day in a row that my oldest daughter was home during COVID, she was watching the 2009 family film, Hotel for Dogs, starring Emma Roberts. (It’s bad!!) The premise of the movie is as described: they try to create a hotel for dogs. At one point, this “hotel for dogs” gets shut down. It’s the kind of movie that always ends up with a happy ending, but for a brief moment, there’s a mild amount of tension, and in that moment, my daughter broke. I’d never seen her cry over a movie before, and this was an ugly cry. Big tears. I held her, and we waited for the happy ending to kick in.
This discovery revealed a larger sensitivity towards animals in her, a fact I keep in mind whenever sitting down to watch a movie, TV show, or game. I suspected this was a sensitivity that developers kept in mind while making games with animals, too, and set out to ask a bunch of game developers how they handle animals in games.
Wobbledogs, for example, is a goofy pet simulator with wild physics and genetics simulations, an experience the developers describe as a “casual and chill sandbox for players of all ages who want to care for their very own virtual pets in a surprising, unique, and stress-free environment.” It’s charming to look at, filled with outrageous visuals and polygons that technically approximate dogs but aren’t trying to be realistic.
And they can die! Explosively! Their parts scatter, becoming food. It’s why the game’s designer, Tom Astle, implemented a feature where players can turn off dog death.
“People often react even more strongly to animals dying in media than people, even when they haven't formed any sort of relationship with that animal,” said Astle in an interview. “This reaction feels multiplied in the case of dogs, probably because it's such a common experience for people to have had a strong relationship with one at some point. And then if the dog that's dying is framed as their dog, that's obviously going to trigger an even stronger reaction.”
“My nine-year-old gets a little weird about animals in games sometimes,” said a parent in response to a recent Crossplay chat question. “She’s fine with taking out goombas and koopas, but if it’s a real animal, even if it’s attacking me first, she gets upset and doesn’t want me to play. She’ll play Goat Simulator and knock people into volcanoes, but she won’t do anything where she ends up harming an animal.”
Astle went “back and forth” on death several times, to the point that Astle was implementing death, then removing it, then adding it back in. It was a confusing process, and you can see some of the “back and forth” in the Steam discussion forums.
“Maybe an option to turn off the death animation/cannibalism?” wrote one player. “I love the game, but I found it highly upsetting to the point where I had to take a break. I'm a highly sensitive person and I get easily attached to these little dudes. I would prefer if they just went POOF instead of the howling and the popping.”
(The “cannibalism,” for the record, is because when the dogs explode into pieces, other creatures can eat what remains. It’s far less grotesque than it sounds.)
Wobbledogs is, at its core, about chaos and evolution, with dog “traits” evolving over time. What players feed changes these traits. So while death has a tinge of sadness, it’s also crucial to playing the game and trying new ideas.
“Because I was so conscious about peoples' potential reactions to death, I built a whole suite of features around that system,” said Astle. “If I was going to force players to engage with that feature, it needed to feel thoughtful. The first time I put death in, I believe dogs just turned into ragdolls with little X's for eyes and then you could just like, delete the bodies. It was very impersonal and straightforward. The system had no reason to exist, which made it feel extra morbid. Once I had a reason to add it back in I was able to build out supporting features that made it feel like a more natural part of the game's world, which I think makes it feel less unfair. It can still be a little sad, but hopefully players understand why it has to happen.”
While Wobbledogs is targeting a broad audience, Endling: Extinction is Forever, a somber and hauntingly emotional game where players are “the last mother fox on Earth” in a version of the post-apocalypse where humans have thoroughly savaged the planet’s resources, is distinctly more adult. You’re supposed to feel sad about this one.
It’s a game where players can, over the journey, fail. Not all of your cubs may survive, and there are animations where you, as the mother fox, have their neck snapped.
“When we approached the depiction of injury, suffering, and death in Endling, our goal at Herobeat Studios was to find that sweet spot," said Javier Ramello Marchioni, CEO of Endling developer Herobeat Studios in an interview. “We knew it was crucial to show the harsh realities animals face while also keeping things in check so players wouldn't get overly upset.”
Marchioni emphasized this wasn’t about “shock value,” though there’s no denying the shock. There’s even a YouTube video compiling the game’s upsetting animations.

“We also put a lot of effort into creating an emotional bond between players and the animal characters,” said Marchioni, who said there’s digital graffiti throughout Endling with the names of pets owned by different developers. “We wanted players to genuinely care about them and feel connected. That way, when there was a risk of injury, suffering, or death, it hit home. We aimed to evoke empathy and make players understand the consequences of their actions.”
In Endling, humans are responsible for the world being in this state, but it’s seen as a collective failure, not an individual one. Regardless, innocent creatures like the mother fox are thrust into a world more challenging than one that previously existed.
“We aimed to convey the potential for failure, injury, suffering, and death while still being respectful and considerate,” he said. “The goal was to create an impactful and thought-provoking experience that raises awareness about the challenges animals face. And, of course, we hoped to inspire players to take action and make a positive difference in the real world.”
Marchioni noted how, over the course of development, there were three “production babies,” referencing children born before Endling shipped. (They’re in the credits!)
“Being parents totally influenced how we portrayed the emotional bond between players and the animal characters, he said. “Having that firsthand experience of the parent-child relationship made us understand the depth of love and protection we feel for our young ones. We wanted players to connect with the characters on a real emotional level, so we put our hearts into making that happen.”
Wobbledogs has no “real” violence, while Endling has explicit but purposeful violence. There are middle grounds, like depicting cartoonish violence. One of the questions my daughter asked when we booted up a Pokémon game on a lark—a game that ultimately proved beyond her because there was too much reading—was a question as old as time: “Dad, why are they fighting one another?” Uh, don’t think about it, OK?

“Kids media is chock full of all sorts of violence, cruelty, animal fighting, animal exploitation, and terrifying things,” said Ben Wasser, designer on the Pokémon-inspired Ooblets, where the combat system is dancing. “Our avoidance of those elements in Ooblets was just to make an idealized world that appeals to us and that we’d hope appeals to other adults as well. It’s just like, hey wouldn’t it be cool if you could settle every major problem in your life with dancing?”
Wasser said Ooblets was primarily targeted at adults, but they do hear from a lot of parents playing with their kids, which “makes us really happy.”
Ooblets didn’t start as Pokémon-with-dancing. It had typical RPG combat to start.
“When we would make promo gifs and videos, we’d often throw a dancing animation on the humanoid characters so that they weren’t just standing around awkwardly,” said Wasser. “As we kept sharing these, we noticed people really responded to the dancing and had started associating Ooblets with dancing. Unfortunately, the actual game had zero dancing or dance-related mechanics, so we started thinking of ways we could integrate something like that into the game.”
Eventually, the tone felt at odds with the fighting, as the team found it “harder to reconcile what’s basically dogfighting with the cute colorful world that was unfolding.”
The presence of animals does not signal it’s for children, nor does a cartoonish look, but it probably suggests the developers will display a sensitivity for kids and adults.
Last Thing: How have your children responded to the presence of animals in games?
Also:
It’s tragic how many people don’t have this trophy in Final Fantasy XVI. I cannot stop myself from hitting the “pet” prompt whenever it comes up.
My own history with animals is weird, because I’m pretty allergic. Cats and dogs made me miserable growing up, even though my parents eventually adopted two cats to help with my brother’s anxiety. I did grow a specific immunity to them.
We also have a very, very old chihuahua named Pixel. No, we did not name her that; the person rehabilitating her got tired of naming new dogs, so she’d look up the next word for “small” in the thesaurus and “pixel” came up. Go figure, right?
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
My wife (8) and daughter played Blanc together. At one point your pair of animals are guiding a pair of goats and one of them falls. For a moment you think oh no, the goat died! But you run around and find it down in the snow below you. It's ok, but it's scared, and the sibling gets angry at -you- because it was hurt. My daughter had a really hard time with that part, both because the animal got hurt and because the goat was so mad at the pair. It sat with her for a long time.
She's a pretty sensitive kid in general so we have to be careful what we play. We do a lot of investigating ahead of time before letting her dive in. Blanc was one we all saw on a Nindie Direct and she just couldn't wait for it so we let our guard down a bit. Her next big awaited game is Little Kitty Big City, though, so I think that one should be pretty safe.
Side note about Pixel: I remember you mentioning her on the Bombcast way back, and I'm guessing she's a similar age as our Chihuahua Wrex. Yes, named after Urdnot Wrex, because at 15 pounds with no fat on him he's a true unit.