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Indie games have a lot to answer to live up to. To find something original, innovative and exciting — and, in many cases, a hidden gem better than the vast majority of the publisher-supported fare you'll find in your local games emporium – you'll have to wade through armies of sub-par Breakout clones, insipid platformers and tepid side-scrolling Galaga rip-offs. When you do find that shimmering jewel, though, it's worth it — your own little piece of gaming greatness. When I was introduced to Venture Arctic it was clear that, even after a mere few hours, I was playing something special. It's not just a hidden gem – it's a whole diamond mine.

Andy Schatz is the brainchild behind the Indie studio Pocketwatch Games, who crafted first Venture Africa, and now the chilled-out sequel Arctic. The first game in the fledgling series was developed for a mere $8,000 and yet sold 70,000 copies all over the world. 4% of the profits were given to WILD, a charity specialising in African conservation. This is a world apart from the development hothouses that Schatz, the company founder, left because he felt stifled by the high-pressure environment fostered by businesses that make games for shareholders first and customers second. His new company is equally a world apart, and it shows — the time, care and, dare I say it, love invested in Venture Arctic is visible, right there on the screen, in the game you play.

It's a game of, primarily, ecology and the environment: an interactive ecosystem that you control from an omnipotent standpoint. The controls are simplistic, belying the game's status as an experience aimed squarely at the younger members of the family. All of the in-game actions are easily implemented with the mouse buttons — there are no keyboard shortcuts to remember that are vital for gameplay — and the interface itself is also designed to be simple and accessible for younger gamers. It's a little slow to react but otherwise fine.

The meat of the game — excuse the pun, it's in bad taste anyway considering this is a wildlife preservation simulator — is in the cycle of the seasons and the management and manipulation of the many strains of animal that make up your particular ecosystem. Each season comes complete with its own special abilities that are free to use during that period but costs points if you use them at unnatural times of the year. Spring has the ability to grow tasty plants for your land-based animals and the 'pregnancy' tool. Summer has the sun, naturally, which is used to melt away winter's frosty ice. Autumn, meanwhile, offers plankton to feed your sea-dwelling beasties and the horrible – but necessary – ability to kill animals.

I said that the meat of the game is the cycle of the seasons throughout the year — and that is comfortably nestled in a handful of well-designed scenarios that make up the bulk of Venture Arctic's gameplay. There's five to choose from, each revolving around a real-world location that has, conveniently, a local potentially wildlife-affecting problem. Alaska has a new oil pipeline, for example, and Svalbard in Norway has a huge gas platform in the middle of the sea. Progression through the scenarios takes the form of achieving certain goals — 5 more than the previous level throughout – that are completed by breeding a species to a certain level of population. As you progress, more animals are unlocked (you can use the sun to thaw some creatures out as they become relevant to the level) that are pertinent to your goals, and you slowly build up a more complicated ecosystem with full food chains from top to bottom; it's hugely satisfying when you get near to completing a scenario and find that a whole little world is existing and, more often than not, thriving, thanks to your intervention.

One of the key features about the seasons — and one that drives the game's mechanic onwards — is how they're all balanced perfectly and seamlessly linked together. Just like they do in nature, as a matter of fact. Spring brings pregnancy — vital for population growth — and food. Summer brings thawing of the land and melting of the sea, allowing animals to thrive, breed and grow. Autumn brings inevitable death, but more food — and winter brings, arguably, the most important tool of all: snow and ice.

The chilly weather is, after all, vital to progression in Venture Arctic. When an animal dies, depending on which season they're aligned with — Arctic cod with winter, rabbits with spring, for example — they leave a soul behind that provides points for their time of the year. You use snow and ice to hunt out and collect them — a liberal spraying of cold weather over the map roots them out — and haul them into your coffers for purchase of ability or animals. It is, therefore, advantageous to keep the natural cycle of, well, nature flowing freely. It's like a business, I suppose. You need money coming in — new animals — and there's always money going out — natural deaths — to maintain some sort of order. Quite how much the esteemed Andy Schatz would like me comparing his ecological creation to big business, though, is a matter of debate.

The animals themselves — like the rest of the game environment, actually — are a triumph. You can zoom the camera in to worm-eye level and watch them frolicking and playing or zoom out and observe their behavioural patterns changing through the seasons. There's also a healthy number of different creates to make the game interesting — from crows to narwhals and polar bears to killer whales, plus more obscure creatures. A word of warning, though — jellyfish are an absolute nightmare to breed successfully. You can also buy 'hero animals' if you accumulate enough seasonal souls; another reason to generate a decent turnover of fauna in your miniature environment as you can keep populations high whilst also collecting the souls of dead creatures.

Pocketwatch have also included several variable factors to help make the game a little more unpredictable, and these are mirrored on real-world events that both spice up the game and explore a little of Schantz's philosophy and opinions towards the environment. You can toggle these options on or off whenever you like, too, which means the learning curve and difficulty can be easily altered for younger players' progression. Available are such ecological effects as global warming and deforestation, but also fluctuations in temperature and the length of the seasons that, whilst occurring naturally, still alter the gameplay experience and leave you genuinely worried as to the length of the seasons — as sometimes you can't complete all the tasks you want to in a given time and have to hold it off for the next year, hoping that your fragile wildlife will survive.

Graphically, it's very much a children's game. Venture Arctic sheds any potential graphics card-burning special effects and anti-aliased textures, in return presenting a stylised world of cutesy, fluffy animals and luscious, bright green grass that turns to fiery warm shades of red and brown with the onset of autumn. None of the animals are hugely detailed, but the graphics are definitely beyond serviceable and fantastically convey the playful nature of the excellent animation.

Venture Arctic is, given the environmentally friendly nature of the game's development, a mirror for Mother Earth herself. The way that the processes of nature's progression have been implemented into a game that, whilst hugely entertaining, is also tremendously educational, is inspired: you need winter to collect souls, you need summer to melt the snow and ice to make your creatures thrive. It's a game that can, despite the childish interface and atmosphere, be enjoyed by anyone — a fantastic antidote in a world where the big, ultra-marketed releases focus on nuclear bombs and Master Chiefs. The balancing is superb — jellyfish an exception — and your young brood will have massive amounts of entertainment from working through the scenarios and learning at the same time – and so will you. Don't say I didn't warn you.