Terra Nil: In Review

An excellent little puzzle game

As always, you should read/watch multiple reviews before buying a game and never pre-order. While it may feel a little hypocritical, given that I preorder books all the time, I’ve never been burned by preordering a book. I’ve been burned every single time I’ve preordered a video game.

When I initially saw Terra Nil’s marketing, I thought it was something of an ecology simulator. A game where you might foster a region back from the brink by carefully picking which plants and animals went there. If that is what you are looking for, Terra Nil won’t be for you.

Mechanics

Instead of a simulator, it’s a puzzle game. Each puzzle occurs on a different map, and each map has specific goals which have to be carried out, though there are optional challenged in the form of climate goals (usually having to do with heat and humidity. The main goals are split into three phases. In the first phase the map will look something like this:

All the brown is toxic sludge. The player’s job is to clean it up. Initially, the best you can do is place some electrical plants and use those to power some toxic scrubbers. Once enough scrubbers have cleared land, you can place another building which plants grasses, reclaiming some meadows so the place looks like this:

Then this:

Once a certain threshold is passed, the next phase begins unlocking more advanced buildings which generate different terrain (forests, scrublands, wetlands, coral reefs etc.) and the first animals begin to show up. Each type of terrain needs to take up a certain amount of area, and some types need certain conditions in order to grow. Forests for instance, can only grow on land that has been burnt, while wetlands can only grow in low-laying regions near water.

While you can just blob out different biomes in large chunks, it’s actually better to spread them out a bit in order to make the 3rd phase easier. This leads to regions that look something like this:

Once all the correct terrains have been placed in the appropriate amounts, the final stage begins. By this point plenty of animals will have arrived, looking for homes among the now restored environment, but it takes a little work tailoring that environment for them so they can be happy. Some animals may need removed from the environment they initially settled in and placed elsewhere on the map, they may need more flora placed near them, or they may just need more access to a different area of the map. Once a certain number of animals are happy, you need to pack up and move on recycling all of your old buildings before loading it onto an airship bound for the next region.

In addition to the base phases there are a number of climate goals which can be achieved, some of which can make a puzzle easier (Rain and snow for instance clear off any remaining toxic ground) and others which complicate things (Some buildings require certain temperatures or humidity levels to build at all). These climate goals add about ten minutes to a maps runtime, which usually isn’t more than about 20 or so minutes anyway, and they can add some real challenge once a player fully grasps the mechanical basis underlying the game.

Graphics

Graphically the game is quite simple, 2d sprites and minor graphical effects woven together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s pretty, but also pretty simple. There’s nothing mind-blowing here, just plain assets used well as part of a cohesive vision. And honestly? I don’t think you can ask for much more than that from a small indie studio.

Audio

The audio is much the same as the graphics, solid work that, just… fits, becoming more interesting and livelier as the map gets more complex. I wouldn’t call it simple, but it isn’t incredible either, and I think that’s for the better. Like the rest of the game, it’s efficient, doing just enough to put you in the mood the game wants you in, without doing so much as to draw attention to it.

Technical Issues

I did note some issues in the game though. Firstly, Terra Nil doesn’t seem to play nice with a browser open in the background. I suffered multiple crashes to desktop throughout my playthrough.

Secondly, some of the buildings don’t quite seem to function the way they were intended. The Research Center for instance, is used to interact with climate goals in a couple of early maps. However, in later maps, you can interact with the climate goals without the Research Center. I’m honestly not sure which of these is intended, but it was worth noting.

I also had issues placing small buildings on the terrain I wanted them on. Occasionally I’d have to place it, press the undo button, and the replace it where I wanted it. Pitons and Monorail pillars were the worst about this.  

Conclusion

In the end, I had a lot of fun with Terra Nil. It’s not a particularly hard or long game, instead it functions in the same basic space as a coloring book: pick your colors, decide which one you want for a given task, obey some basic rules, have fun, and watch the next 8 or so hours slip by in a pleasant hum of music.

At the end of the day Terra Nil is a meditative experience, and one that encourages the player to think about the planet and their role in it, all without feeling preachy. I highly recommend Terra Nil to anyone who has an interest in puzzle games, or is looking for something chill between major releases.


The following is a link to buy Terra Nil from Steam. I do not receive any money should you purchase from my link, I just want to make it easy for you, if you do decide to.