Playable animal or plant protagonist
An increasing number of games enable players to take on the role of a non-human animal or plant. This pattern may work with negative emotions like a sense of being overwhelmed or helpless, e.g. in the fact of in-game climate threats like wildfires (as in a VR exhibit like Tree or a game like Gibbon: Beyond the Trees). It may also tap into positive or more ‘irreverent’ affects, e.g. conveying the enjoyment of free movement in Gibbon: Beyond the Trees or the chaotic group behavior of monkeys looking for opportunities to cool down in the psychedelic platform game Warm Monkey (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2520360/Warm_Monkey/).
In terms of how these games may facilitate destabilizing anthropocentrism or even (which is often overestimated) fostering empathy with non-human entities, it is useful to distinguish whether non-human personas are an option (as e.g. in the Blue Planet TTRPG) or the mandatory form of focalization. Moreover, from a design perspective, it is interesting to consider whether the animal or plant would have to be the protagonist or whether they could be a temporarily playable side character (like e.g. the falcon in the later Assassin’s Creed games, although it is used in a rather reductionist way as a surveillance ‘tool’).