Terra Nil Review (PC)

Wind power is strewn across all available rock formations, including some that I created myself. They are powering many basic toxin scrubbers, which perform the first step in the long road to ecosystem restoration. Irrigators turn some of the land back to a good shade of green, while carefully placed water pumps make the rivers run again.

This is the relatively easy part of the restoration process. More complex buildings are needed to try and wrangle the climate back into shape, creating a welcoming environment. Once rain starts to fall, even the barren land I wasn’t able to deal with during phase one becomes green. So it’s time to think about different types of flora and how they can be balanced.

All this effort will culminate in the reintroduction of animals back to the area. Each of the featured species has different habitat preferences and it might be time to go back and do some major re-modeling work to create the required conditions. Sometimes rebuilding a thriving ecosystem involves a lot of creative destruction.

Terra Nil is developed by Free Lives, with publishing from Devolver Digital. I played using Steam on the PC. It will be also offered on mobile devices via Netflix. The game uses familiar city-building ideas but deploys them in a novel way, asking players to bring barren landscapes back to life.

+4more

The universe featured is our own but pushed far enough into the future that the planet is barren, ecosystems destroyed by pollution, and a civilization unwilling or unable to deal with it. The land is barren, the oceans are polluted, and nothing is green. Players will slowly deal with the situation and restore the world but, somewhat fittingly, there’s no human presence in the game.

There are signs that we exist but we see no faces, and we don’t know who is organizing everything. This narrative scarcity gives players the space to fill the space with their own ideas. It also means that the game does not have to take a political position and the act of re-creating pristine environments has the backing of the entire human race.

Terra Nil’s levels start with barren landscapes and the sight is a little depressing. Players will initially focus on putting down windmills to get the power to then add toxin scrubbers and irrigators to get extra resources and make a big portion of the level able to support more flora. Water pumps bring water to river beds and calcifiers or equivalent buildings create more rock formations to repeat the loop.

Hit a certain threshold and a new tier of buildings opens up, focused on various types of flora and climate balancing. The game helpfully offers a list of optional objectives but players are free to go at their own pace and create their own intermediate milestones. Then it’s time to re-introduce wildlife.

This effort involves a scanning system to discover their requirements and make sure that the reconstructed landscape can support them. It’s a little fiddlier than I would like. The fourth phase is the most interesting part of Terra Nil. Gamers have to use a range of new buildings to recycle everything that they put down in the first three phases.

Play Video

The goal is to leave behind a pristine environment with no signs of the effort that went into getting to this point. I loved this part of the game and how all the building choices players made are important and can make it more difficult for them to actually complete their task.

The developers have also made the smart decision of including a Zen mode, allowing players to eliminate all costs and allow them to focus on simply completing the challenge. There are also three difficulty levels to choose from. More games should offer this much granularity of choices.

Terra Nil’s main idea is well represented by its gameplay, especially during the first two stages. It’s not hard to keep a balance between leaf income and spending while pushing to green as much of the map as possible (and there’s always the option to restart and use learned lessons on a blank slate). It’s harder to love the scanning associated with animal re-introduction work.

I loved the idea of recycling everything to leave an area pristine before leaving. There’s no way to deliver classic city-builder forever expansion when the goal is to rebuild an ecosystem. The game acknowledges that conceptually and creates mechanics to suit the idea. But it feels a little too easy to recycle everything, even if players might have to create a few new rivers in the process. This part of the game needed more innovative gameplay.

Terra Nil’s presentation is mostly focused on function, not beauty. It looks good when the player stays zoomed out, working to restore the ecosystem and find the best way to bring it back to life. Zooming in reveals a relative lack of detail, especially when the animals appear. The game also offers a dedicated screenshot mode for players to want to document the evolution from barren to recreated functioning ecosystem.

I like the variety of biomes and the hint book is also beautifully crafted. The soundtrack stays mostly in the background but it is nice and relaxing. I like how the sound landscape moves and integrates more effects as the restoration goes on, offering another way to track how the land is healing.

+4more

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion