Get in touch with nature with 'SimAnimals'

— -- SimAnimals, a new simulation game for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, puts nature in your hands, literally. You play as an animated hand as you tinker with the different forest environments by interacting with the creatures and plants found there. Because you can touch, pick up and move all of the animals and plants, it is a fascinating experience that is hard to put down.

Full of more than 30 animals — including prickly porcupines, playful bears, smelly skunks and determined beavers — and more than 80 plants, the game's overall theme is for you to help each animal and plant find happiness.

When you enter an environment, you will see a bar graph on the top of the screen indicating that the environment isn't happy. As you play the game, your actions have consequences expressed as happy-faced or sad-faced energy on the happiness bar.

For example, if you put your hand over an acorn tree and shake it back and forth with the Wii remote, a seed might fall out. If you pick up that acorn and drop it on top of a squirrel, it will eat it and then emit happy energy. On the other hand, if you pick up a skunk, whirl it around and fling it into the nearest stream, it will emit sad energy. Likewise, if you pick up a tree and plop it into soil it doesn't like, it will emit sad energy.

To help you, the game offers nature lessons and presents you with challenges that earn medals and unlock other animals and plants. You can choose which of these challenges to pursue. Most teach you how to interact with the animals and plants in a positive way, but a few have surprising consequences. For instance, if you pursue the challenge to make a skunk spray your hand, your hand faints and drops to the ground.

As you make the first location happy, the next will unlock. Each location features different animals and plants. But you will find that you may need to introduce animals and plants from previous locations. You can do this using the game's backpack.

Your backpack can store seeds, animals that you have befriended and even a lake's worth of water. Befriending an animal is a process that involves feeding it and winning its trust so you can pet and play with it. It may even turn over and let you tickle its stomach.