Terra Nil Review: A Peaceful Climate Puzzler

screenrant.com:

All too often video games are based around domination. The idea of balance is rare, even in more relaxing games like and, and instead everything often needs to be at the whim of the player — including nature itself. This is where , from developer Free Lives, changes things by instead tasking the player with rebuilding damaged ecosystems.

is a strategy game at heart. The player is thrown into an isometric grid of a wasteland, where nothing grows and nothing lives, and must slowly reverse the catastrophe that has led to this crisis. Over the course of the game, the player will travel the world and visit different environments, bringing back different flora and fauna and leaving the world in a better place than they left it.

Related: 10 Best Video Games About Saving The Environment

Each stage is structured in three parts. First, the player needs to clean up the wasteland, removing toxicity and creating a landscape where things can grow. After that, it's a case of introducing flora and fauna diversity, taking care to make sure that factors like humidity and temperature are considered and using tools like controlled burns to help build up biodiversity. Finally, it's a matter of removing human elements like the buildings and machinery the player has used, leaving behind an environmentalist's video game dream.

What makes so interesting is that it's a game of balance, rather than a game of control. Rather than simply powering the way through each level with brute force, instead the player needs to make sure they are keeping an eye on their resources versus what the ecosystem requires, delicately introducing wetlands, plains, or rainforests depending on the needs of the location. The purpose of is the opposite of homogeny, and