Video games are usually based on a power fantasy. We wish we could slay a dragon, overthrow an evil king, or run faster than any hedgehog ever should. Arguably the biggest power fantasy of all, though, is offered by Terra Nil, which lets you tackle the overwhelming existential dread of climate change.
In Terra Nil, you have a simple task – repair a ruined, barren planet, coaxing plants and animals back to the surface until the world teems with life again. It’s a beautifully simple concept executed almost perfectly by developer Free Lives. It takes a fine touch to turn one of the most stressful topics in our world into a truly relaxing interactive experience, but this is a wonderfully balanced game that achieves exactly what it sets out to do and never feels repetitive.
The planet you were sent to restore has four different regions that need to be repaired. This is achieved by detoxifying the land and water, planting grass and diversifying the biome. Later levels require you to adjust the climate, raising and lowering the temperature or humidity to allow different life forms to develop, but it never becomes a terribly complicated endeavor. The resources you use to buy new machines are generous and easy to reclaim. Only once in ten hours of play did we have to restart an area because we made too many stupid mistakes.
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have to start over several times. Unfortunately, the Switch version of the game is more unstable than we expected. It crashed a few times while we were playing it, once taking about an hour of progress with it and forcing us to restart from the first map. That, combined with some framerate issues and problems with the recycle drone navigating properly, keeps Terra Nil from being a must-play title on the Switch.
Even with these problems, it was hard to tear ourselves away from the game. It plays like most strategy city building games. You have to plan how you are going to place your power sources and how you are going to place your machines to try and change most areas. There are four recovery regions in the main game, each building on mechanics introduced in the previous one. The main challenge becomes space – fitting all the different biomes into limited areas. Certain buildings require access to fresh water or must be built on a cliff, forcing you to plan ahead as you go along.
After you rebuild each map’s biomes, you need to scan to see what fauna has returned thanks to your efforts. This is probably the most interesting puzzle in the game because each animal needs a different environment to thrive. Bears, for example, only live on top of a hill with a forest and a beehive, which means you have to change the carefully designed environment to attract the animal. Trying to create a world where every creature can thrive is a delicate balancing act, but it’s incredibly satisfying once you find the right arrangement.
However, the most rewarding part of the mission comes at the end when you scavenge the last bits of gear from the map, recycling it so you can remove all evidence of your actions from the planet’s surface. Although the recycling drone got stuck in some of the waterways we built, slowing our efforts considerably, watching the last turbine being packed into our airship was the perfect ending message. After all, nature thrives without human involvement.
Even at higher difficulty levels, Terra Nil is not a particularly difficult game. Those looking for a challenge won’t find it here, but that accessibility is intentional. Most people will need about eight hours to complete the game’s four core maps, plus an additional two or three to complete the optional variants that unlock when you clear the planet. There isn’t a huge amount of content here and a few extra maps would help make the purchase more appealing. Aside from the instability of the console port, our biggest gripe with Terra Nil is that we just wanted more of it.
The developers said a patch was in the works to address some of these issues, including framerate issues in the Flooded City region and issues with placing particularly large buildings, but it hadn’t been released while we played Terra Nil in the two weeks since release. It’s a shame because the visuals have excellent attention to detail. Seeing deer grazing in fields or crabs scurrying along sandy beaches is a visual reminder of your mission. You can watch every barren wasteland slowly but surely come back to life before your eyes.
Terra Nil is one of the most relaxing city building simulators we’ve come across. Everything from the ambient noise of the birds to the light soundtrack that plays in the background gives the game a wonderful relaxed atmosphere. The short length left us wanting just a little more and those looking for a real challenge should look elsewhere, but the game manages to get its environmental message across with minimal text or dialogue. It’s just a shame that multiple crashes and performance issues dampened the mood and prevented the Switch version from being the final release of this fantastic title.
Conclusion
Despite the technical flaws and short gameplay, we couldn’t beat Terra Nil on Switch. The simple act of rebuilding a broken and polluted world is so satisfying and well thought out. From the moment you land your first wind turbine to watching your airship remove all evidence of your hard work, the game gives you a sense of hope for our own climate crisis without you ever having to say a single word. This is pure relaxation in video game form and worth picking up, especially once the promised first patch rolls out.
