Action title Broforce is just the 80s ground up into a fine powder. Genital Jousting is what men do with their little swords. Gorn is the softcore version of a Ridley Scott film, and now there is Free Lives’ next game, the eco-warrior em’ up Terra Nil. Free Lives have made a number of games but none quite like this beautiful, colorful, and luscious puzzle game. Ever since I played the demo long enough ago, I’ve made my position on Terra Nil known: Pure excitement. Let’s make that official with a full-blown review of the relaxing but sometimes tricky puzzle game.

With the fall of humanity and the destruction of the planet through pollution and climate change, you take on the role of tech-assisted mother nature to rebuild, replenish, rejuvenate, and repopulate wildlife. Terra Nil isn’t hard per se, but the way some of the random generation of maps you’ll encounter can make some challenges more difficult than they need to be. Being regimented in getting to the objectives and where/how you place each machine, Terra Nil is a puzzle game with enough bite that you can still get it wrong.

As much as it is proclaimed to be relaxing and quite meditative, there is still a game under the beautiful hand-painted textures. Starting out you’ll place wind turbines to power all your machines to revitalize this dilapidated hellscape of this arid land. Doing so or placing other buildings that create greenery gives you an in-game currency. None of that Activision/EA/2K/other studios’ style of currency, just something in-game that lets you buy and build more machines.

This is where that difficulty comes in. You are given targets to hit specific temperatures, percentages of land or water of certain types, which some animals will only live in specific cross sections of, and so on. There is always the question “am I striking the right balance?” The UI tries to help in this regard but it sometimes isn’t the UI’s fault when muggins here runs out of useable land so the goal isn’t attainable unless I use all the currency. The trouble can be with holding off information such as the canopy forests needing to be built on raised-up land, which gets frustrating when you mess up.

Restarting a level once or twice can get a little aggravating, an antithesis of Terra Nil‘s entire ethos. The whole zen “vibe” of Terra Nil isn’t totally lost, as there are a number of options to craft your experience how you want it. There is a literal “zen mode” to remove all the trouble of having to worry about a depleting currency, optional hints, and automatic unlocks for the objectives. Additionally, you can change the building cost (though not during a level) and the starting resources. Terra Nil is not a hard game unless you want it to be as you bump up the building costs and turn off all the hints.

Despite my (and many others’) love of being impaled on a poleaxe, Terra Nil is one of those ultra relaxing “casual” titles that break through that wall of being a “h4rdc0r3 g4ym3r™” like the people on Reddit. Similar (though much more relaxing) to Dinosaur Polo Club’s Mini Motorways, the bright colors, a simple task, and overall calm vibe makes Terra Nil just a joy to play in comparison. While everything else is about big epic stories about wars and fights, Terra Nil‘s “story” is that of rebuilding the world for all the lovely, cuddly animals that inhabit this world.

Saying Terra Nil has a story might be a little far-fetched given there is none. The short campaign (four levels) offers you the ability to make a dry brown wasteland into something that is teeming with life. Once you’ve completed that and set off to terraform some other planet, you unlock the alternate levels with a bit more of a challenge to them. In total there are 8 levels to complete and though I think many of us might want more, I think I can understand why there are so few.

Despite my excitement for Terra Nil as it is a breath of fresh unpolluted air in a sea of gun-based or general conflict-based boringness, its gameplay has a limit. By the run of 8 levels (a few hours of gameplay), you’ll have seen all that Terra Nil has to offer twice over. Call it damning with faint praise if you must, but despite my excitement toward Terra Nil, I knew from the demo a few years back that it would be difficult to drag tens of hours out of such a simple concept. While it holds your attention for a few hours, Terra Nil never overstays its welcome.

That welcome is greatly extended by the art direction being a blast of color and luscious greenery injected straight into your eyeballs. Pushing beyond the utterly magnificent maps with hand-drawn art, I would be remiss to not mention the book, “A Beginner’s Guide to Ecosystem Restoration.” Effectively a handbook on how to build the planet handed down from grandmother nature, this is a concept art book in-game with diagrams of what each machine does, your goals for each level, and small descriptions of what each animal needs. All of this is shown on kitbashed graph paper.

Ultimately, Terra Nil is beautiful from top to bottom with a stand-out style and enjoyable (but sometimes challenging) gameplay thanks to random landing zones. Short and simple, it is never going to be everyone’s cup of tea but is certainly mine, and I don’t even like tea. There could be a touch of clearing up on some explanations, or some warnings before screwing yourself over in a level or two. However, with difficulty options being adaptable on the fly, many of these obstacles can be overcome. The only thing I can see being a big issue with some is its length.

A PC review copy of Terra Nil was provided by Devolver Digital for the purposes of this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Terra Nil

$24.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Gorgeous art.
• A number of difficulty options to make Terra Nil as hard or not as you want.
• Doesn't try to outstay its welcome with limited gameplay.

Cons

• Some of the direction could be cleared up.