Terra Nil (PC) - Demo Preview

I would assume you’ve played a game in the last 15-years, so you’ll know the word “color” to an artist in the games industry is like asking Batman what his favorite colors are. There is a lot of black and dark grey, sometimes brown too. I don’t know what happened around the PS3 era; I think everyone got a heavy bout of diarrhea and thought their toilet bowl looked nice one day. Nevertheless, I don’t think there has ever been a game that has looked as nice and inviting as Terra Nil, the new game from the people behind Broforce, of all things.

The next game from those smelly arm-pitted eco-warriors is one of the puzzle game variety. The world has been turned into a scarce wasteland of just the color brown; like a Call of Duty during the late ’00s. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to rejuvenate these dry and hallow wastes to luscious green pastures and forests so dense and lovely, light bends around them. Ok, joking and heavy references to The Thick of It aside, on the surface it looks very easy and shouldn’t be too hard to work out.

No, if you’re an idiot like me, you’ll be asking yourself how any of this is meant to be possible. I think despite my ineptitude, Terra Nil still fits in the realm of casual/relaxing gaming. However, it is also something you’ll have to put a little more thought into than some other games you might put in that category. There aren’t restrictive time limits or anything like that, but the “currency” as I think it is best to call it, is your biggest boundary to success. For every tool that you use to reinvigorate your nature reserve, it costs you a small amount of what are shown in the bottom left as leaves, i.e your currency. Some cost you outright and others, with a bit of careful placement, gain you some back for your troubles.

Your goal is to make the entire map as green and highly underdeveloped as possible. I’m like Jeremy Clarkson, I’m not good at that. Here and there, I’ll have strips of wasteland or unpopulated soil that would cost far too much to make lovely and full of life again. I believe it is called “min-maxing” in some circles, but you really need to focus on those details of how much you are spending and how much you are receiving for your efforts. Otherwise you are going to cause problems for yourself in the long run, as I kept doing when progressing slowly.

I would stress that there is a slight roughness to the tutorial at the moment, possibly necessitating a little bit of focus given to it to make things more understandable. Nonetheless, what it is trying to teach isn’t that difficult to figure out. Ultimately the demo lets you make your own mistakes, though recovering from them seems rather difficult unless you know where to look. Willy nilly placements and minor misunderstanding in how to complete objectives can be quite a pain after 40+ minutes into a new map. Yet it is so quaint and pleasing to tootle around in, I almost don’t mind.

At the time of writing, neither Free Lives nor Devolver Digital has announced a release date. The game has been in development for about a year now, as we noted when the demo was announced earlier this month. However, I could see the team taking another few months to work on performance and player feedback as it stands. Personally, I am loving it. Having a nice small thing I could do on something portable (hint hint) while watching some TV is always enjoyed. Though, for now, I’m more than happy to fix the world and turn it green while sitting at my desk. I can’t wait to play more when it releases sometime (hopefully) soon.