Having recently watched some Captain Planet, I’m reminded of the lesson about how technology can be harmful to the earth, but also beneficial to it, depending entirely on the hands that use it. Give it to the likes of Dr. Blight and you have an idiot who thinks the best use for tech capable of time travel is to sell a nuclear bomb to a mustachioed Hitler. But give it to someone like Gaia and the Planeteers, and they can easily whip up a device capable of effortlessly cleaning up oil spills, even using the same tech as Dr. Blight due to a mind-swapping ray capable of switching their brain with that of a god (seriously, there’s a reason Blight is the most mocked villain from that show). And that lesson carries over to Free Lives’ new game Terra Nil, which sees to reclaiming wastelands created by the ravages of man by utilizing advanced green technology in order to restore them back to their pristine glory, bringing them back to life as if there was never a trace of unnatural forces.
There really isn’t any setup for Terra Nil beyond that when it comes to plot, just that there’s a planet with several polluted wastelands and it’s your job to reverse the damage. You come in, use your various tools in order to restore environments and get out. Well, okay, it’s a bit more complicated than that, as you need to rebuild each area in various stages. First you have to grow a certain amount of basic greenery such as grass and clean up any polluted water if needed. Then you have to create the conditions needed in order to be able grow more specific environments such as forests, tundra, coral reef, and more. After that, use sonar in order to locate and re-introduce wildlife. And finally, recycle everything you’ve use, load up your airship and leave.
That last step makes for what is easily one of Terra Nil’s most clever and unique hooks, that of being a “reverse city builder.” Fixing the environment is already a good enough challenge, but then the game adds a slice of puzzle elements on top of its simulation gameplay as you attempt to properly dismantle and recycle every peace of machinery you’ve used in order to leave any trace that you’ve been there. You have to properly figure out how to craft waterways and monorail systems in order to get crafts capable of collecting these recycled tools out to each area, which means having to use excavators to hollow out paths for water and crystallize bits of the ocean in order to create rocks needed for monorail posts, among other things. It’s a fun challenge and a unique twist on the formula that gives the game a unique identity.
What helps make it a challenge is that tools such as excavators don’t appear out of thin air, of course. You need to basically spend carbon via a carbon footprint-style currency in order to build anything, and you earn it through various acts of restoration, such as using irrigators to grow grass or successfully recycling a machine. Managing this system is simple, though, as Terra Nil easily informs you of your potential gains or losses with each new addition that you plan. It’s simple, fun and oh so satisfying as you successfully find a way to reduce the carbon and see a flurry of leaves head up, rewarding you for your work.
Also providing a smaller challenge is having to monitor the climate levels in each area, such as the temperature, humidity, radiation and more. These can be alerted by placing down your regular structures as usual, but also by planting down specific things designed to alter the atmosphere in various ways. The impact you create with these changes will be shown, as reaching certain milestones means effects like moss growing on boulders or the appearance of butterflies in fields of flowers. And sometimes, you can even affect the environment around you if you’re too reckless. While your goal in the arctic biome in to melt the snow in order to plant crass, for example, building too many geothermal plants will increase levels to a point where all of the snow starts to melt. Whoops.
All of these moments play to another of Terra Nil’s biggest strengths, that being the level of detail being put into everything. As the land begins to spring to life again, you get hit with several bursts of gorgeous terrain that spring up, creating astonishing visuals, especially as the aforementioned changes begin to happen as well, and you begin to see wholesome and impressive sights such as panda wandering about in this land that you’ve helped rebuild. The amount of work that went into crafting the various tools used has to be applauded as well, explaining how each one works in unique ways to create certain environments. Sometimes it’s just something as simple as a canopy that helps create rainforests, or something more complex like a massive digging station that bring ground up from under the sea to create more ground to work with. It’s just amazing to see how much hard work went into crafting these various tools and the ways they operate.
And really, that’s probably the biggest reason to play Terra Nil: to see a monument to all of the various ways one can create a better world. It’s this perfectly zen game, one about tending to the land and figuring out how to improve it, all set to a perfectly chill soundtrack as well. It has brilliantly simple gameplay – just point and click to select tools and structures and place them – because it wants you to focus more on the environmental message the game has, delivered without sacrificing anything in terms of gameplay. There are even a couple of genuinely shocking moments during the final biome that emphasize things even further, and creating yet another unique obstacle as well. It’s just a terrific sim game, and almost an educational game at that, and there’s not much to say that could do it justice.
Are there any flaws, though? Well, I do admit that I was annoyed by the moments where you have to scan for animals and find areas with the right mix of tiles to properly identify them. You need to find at least three out of six in order to pass each level, except you aren’t given the means to find the requirements until after you’ve placed all the necessary terrain down, meaning you’re likely to miss a couple on your first try unless you’re willing to make heavy changes to what you’ve done. There’s also the matter of the length, clocking in at only five hours or so, but thankfully a set of bonus levels is unlocked afterwards as well, and the randomly-generated maps help increase the replay value as well. Basically, if you want to work towards creating an even better planet after the initial work, Terra Nil has you covered.
Closing Comments:
Terra Nil is a truly unique sim game that does a fantastic job in showcasing various ways the environment can be affected, with an astonishing level of hard work put into the tools needed to make things better. With simple yet incredibly fun gameplay, striking and gorgeous visuals, and a nice level of challenge that rewards players for properly planning things out without putting them under too much pressure, this is a terrifically wholesome and clever game that’s worth checking out.
Reviewed on PC
