In a gaming world saturated by cold-hearted zombies, violent shooters, hack n slash RPGs, and… well, more shooters, Terra Nil offers you a nice warm blanket, a fresh cup of tea, soothing ambience, and a chance to restore nature’s ecosystem to its former glory. Lovely!

Upon starting the game, you are presented with an apocalyptic-looking wasteland: There are no trees, no water, no flowers, no greenery, and, quite frankly, no life existent at all! Your goal is to restore the ecosystem, via the placement and production of various buildings and technologies in an attempt to restore the world to its former glory.

As a demo build, we were given the ability to play one level. The level layout is generated at random each time you load or restart the level. Straight away, this means high replay value! Initially, you start out by placing a ‘Wind turbine’ to generate power. After power, comes the ‘Toxic Scrubber’. Its purpose is to cleanse the land, allowing for the placement of the ‘Irrigator’ which brings back some greenery. After that, you have the option to place a ‘Water Pump’ in crevices to generate water, which will help in the second stage of the building & restoration process.

The ability to place buildings comes in the form of ‘income’, represented by a green leaf icon. When you go to place down an ‘Irrigator’, a grid appears showing you how much land will be converted back to greenery and how much kickback you’ll make as income. As previously stated, each map was generated differently for each playthrough, therefore, we had various obstacles in the form of cliffs, boulders, or crevices to adapt and overcome in order to secure further income.

Stage 2 of the restoration process brings about certain technology advancements e.g. Research Centres, which lowers the price of buildings and upgrades, grants the option to create a controlled fire burn to place down eco-infused trees or water-based irrigation systems that allow for wetlands and even beehives!

Stage 3 is probably the most tricky of the trio. It’s now time to harvest all your resources, destroy all your buildings, and convert their destruction into recyclable material in order to build an aircraft to safely evacuate your restored area and move on to the next location on the Globe.

For its simplicity, Terra Nil proved to be highly addictive. Though it may initially come across as a rinse-and-repeat building placement simulator, it actually takes a good amount of problem-solving and forward-thinking to avoid becoming broke and, ultimately, losing the game.

The art style thus far is a hybrid between the 8-bit glory days of SimCity 2000 mixed with a high definition coat of paint and upscaling, bringing the genre to the modern-day forefront. The colour palettes are both grim and vibrant, giving you a real sense of joy and pleasure as you watch the irrigation system clean the land, allowing grass, trees, flowers, and eventually wildlife to return to the world!

The soundtrack is soft, melodic, and perfectly suited to audibly guide you with your task at hand. No annoying voiceovers or map direction assistance chiming in every 3 mins to re-tell you a piece of gaming advice. The ambience and soft soundtrack presented in Terra Nil is one you’d gladly download and use for a ‘Lo-Fi’ playlist to keep you calm throughout your own rejuvenation process.

Though only a demo, it’s abundantly clear to see that Terra Nil will be leading the forefront in the simulation genre for the next few years. Devolver have once again found, coded, and created a wonderful game to sit nicely in both their catalogue and our lives.

Written by: Brutaleo