Why a recycling mechanic saved Terra Nil's climate cleanup design
Free Lives' environmental strategy game Terra Nil launched last week to critical and commercial success—following a surprisingly strong amount of interest since the game was revealed in June 2021. This is after years of "climate crisis themed" games failing to get much of a footing in commercial game development.
What's driving the game's success? Well for one, players seem to be looking for hope that something can be done about the impact of climate change. Game director Sam Alfred told us in a chat early last month that since a demo for the game released in a 2021 Steam Next Fest event, there's been overwhelming interest from players about that topic.
As always, games about real-world topics only find an audience if they're actually engaging. And even though strategy simulation games have been a steadily growing genre in the last few years, that didn't make Terra Nil an "obvious" game to make. According to Alfred, its core design loop only came together after it tried something few citybuilders have ever tried before: letting players tear down everything they built.
To understand why Free Lives implemented a recycling mechanic, you have to go back to the game's origins. The game started as a game jam experiment (just like Free Lives' breakout game Broforce). Alfred took point on trying to make a climate-themed strategy game, and iterated on it over time to make something the whole company could get behind.
But the game jam prototype and following iterations had a fairly familiar strategy game loop. Players cleared out the toxic terrain of an Earth ruined by climate change, then built terraforming buildings to heal the land.
That was fun, but Alfred ran into a new problem: how should levels in Terra Nil actually end? All
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