Terra Nil Review: A Reverse City Builder?

As shocking as it may seem, Terra Nil was indeed brought to us by Free Lives, the studio behind Broforce, Gorn, and other silly action-packed fun/party games. The full release went live on the 28th of March and now, after a week, it’s rated as Very Positive (1500+ reviews) on Steam, and it’s mostly for good reason.

Whether you’re a building sim enjoyer or someone who just wants to wind down over some relaxing gameplay regardless of genre or niche, this game was recommended by many as the perfect fit. Soothing, relaxing, unique, and most of all, environment-friendly. Let’s see how good it really is though!

Concept

This is a category in which the developers certainly scored sky high.

The idea of city-building in the sim genre is something that we’ve seen a plethora of, with every feature you could imagine already developed and added into one game or another. Somehow though, Free Lives managed to come up with an extremely unique concept, an environmentalist’s biggest dream. You spawn onto the blocky map, its state being nowhere near what you end up leaving it as.

In most city-building sims, there is no end to expansion, whereas with Terra Nil it’s quite the opposite.
Clear out biomes by placing toxic scrubbers and irrigators – more tools become available to you as you progress through the game, – reintroduce animals into a clean and healthy biome and, instead of staying and “growing your empire”, leave.

Pack your bags by recycling any man-made waste you may have left behind (tools, drones, buildings, etc.). When you’re done and all that’s left is nature – its flora, fauna, the landscape, the weather, etc. – you can press the “Appreciate” button, which initiates a series of slow-panning shots of your little environmentalist paradise, essentially marking the map completed.

This is an amazing touch by the team, and it really puts an emphasis on the core focus of the game – reviving nature, and then letting it thrive on its own, uninfluenced by human hand.

Gameplay

Terra Nil has received very mixed reviews when it comes to gameplay, and  even more mixed about its replayability. Many of the negative reviews read things like “not enough content”, or “poor level variety”.

Seeing as there are only 4 biomes, with 1 variation of each, Terra Nil’s replayability is certainly worth talking about. You’re realistically going to need no more than 3-4 hours for completion on standard difficulty. Every instance of a map is randomized, but the pattern you follow stays the same in all instances, and thathas the potential to make things overly repetitive for more demanding gamers.

While the highest difficulty does make up for some of this by restricting certain features and reducing room for error, it still may not be enough for more demanding gamers.

This can, however, be looked at from another perspective, from which it looks like forgiving difficulty options are that way on purpose, which ensures that players of all skill levels can enjoy the experience, without feeling overwhelmed.

Finally, the aforementioned “Appreciate” button allows you a moment to take in the fruits of your labor, all in a slow-panning montage of the land you just restored, which ties together the immersive elements of the game, and there are many immersive elements despite the game lacking depth in many ways.

Perhaps more content could be added in future updates, which would allow it to be taken more seriously as a sim game, and not a fancy concept puzzle game that takes no more than 5 hours to get through.

Visuals & Sound

Terra Nil does not have bad graphics. There, I said it.

It has, objectively, a very clean take on the minimalistic pixelated art style, much more polished than the likes of Factorio, for example. On that note though, Terra Nil is incomparably smaller in scale than Factorio is, which would explain more funds going into the ‘looks department’.
In addition to that, little transitional animations between every action tie together the simple but pretty visuals, with the beautifully relaxing and almost ASMR-like sound effects.

I often found myself feeling a sort of nostalgia when hearing the rustling of leaves break the monotony of a barren silence that you are greeted with in each map’s initial stage. This silence, along with the general theme of the game, adds a sort of existential feeling to things. If you’re generally easily moved or touched, you will, almost undoubtedly, notice exactly what I’m talking about at one point or another.

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