Terra Nil's demo takes Steam by storm and then mops up after itself

rockpapershotgun.com:

Of all the demos featured in this past week’s Steam Next Fest, indie environmental ‘reverse city-builder’ Terra Nil has performed exceedingly well for itself. The demo has cropped up among the top 50 on the most-played games on Steam over the weekend, and is currently nestled between Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and Vampire Survivors. Not bad for a chill game about rewilding a barren planet.

Broforce and Genital Jousting developers Free Lives are behind Terra Nil, and it’s another typically diverse experience from them. I can only think that the staggering heatwaves being experienced throughout much of the US, Europe and the rest of the world recently have driven people to take to Steam, to find some escapism in taking charge of making the environment something approaching pleasant again. Terra Nil certainly makes you feel like you’re scoring wins for an environment even if it’s not the environment.

The demo is fairly short but very sweet. You’re plonked down in a map that wouldn’t look too out of place in any other strategy game except that it’s full of precisely nothing, with the goal to “rejuvenate this wasteland”. If you’re not a fan of wind turbines then look away now, because they’re key to providing eco-friendly power for the rest of your efforts to rewild the toxic sludge that’s everywhere. Once you’ve built a few turbines then that lets you pop out ‘toxic scrubbers’ to clear up the soil, accompanied by a lovely swoosh of flying leaves whenever one’s built.

Those leaves are your currency, which you can invest in building more structures for reclaiming the polluted wilderness for plants, trees and various animals. Finding sites for some irrigators comes next, which start to turn the freshly cleaned patches