Low Poly Animals is a Twitter account dedicated to man's wonkiest friend

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They're triangling their best.

The Sims 4 mouse
(Image credit: EA)

The non-judgemental, hexagonal eye of a shrimp from Runescape. The comically splayed legs of a pigeon from The Sims 2. The oddly soothing smudged visage of a capybara in Age of Empires III. @lowpolyanimals is a place to escape the world and appreciate the angular fauna of gaming’s yesteryear.

The Twitter account launched just two weeks ago with a killer opener: Daytona USA’s sentient flannel.

Since then, animal life from a number of PC classics has featured, including Unreal, classic WoW, and Half-Life (which has just three documented rats, apparently, with a fourth alleged by the game’s wiki).

Runescape has become a regular fixture, because, well:

Now that Low Poly Animals has acquired a fandom, questions have emerged about what qualifies new entries. The account owner hasn’t put a figure on the maximum number of polys, but broadly speaking, the lower the better.

“Look, I’m gonna say it,” they posted last week. “Halo 3 Rat is a good boy but he is too round. I want to see a literal brick with sticks for legs passed off as an animal.”

The appeal is peculiar but undeniable, somewhere between impressionistic art and the tragicomic, relatable energy of being not quite right for the world. Toontown Catfish knows what I’m talking about.

Jeremy Peel
Contributor

Jeremy Peel is an award-nominated freelance journalist who has been writing and editing for PC Gamer over the past several years. His greatest success during that period was a pandemic article called "Every type of Fall Guy, classified", which kept the lights on at PCG for at least a week. He’s rested on his laurels ever since, indulging his love for ultra-deep, story-driven simulations by submitting monthly interviews with the designers behind Fallout, Dishonored and Deus Ex. He's also written columns on the likes of Jalopy, the ramshackle car game. You can find him on Patreon as The Peel Perspective.