Terra Nil Switch Review
Terraforming is the in thing these days on Switch… well maybe not, but in the past 2 weeks, I have played 2 games focussed on Terraforming planets. One set on Mars, the other focussed on reclaiming Earth. Terra Nil is the latter, developed by Free Lives, tasking you to terraform the planet after a cataclysmic event. It’s a unique concept and one I wasn’t completely sold on if I’m being honest. What’s it Like? Get in the airship, put on your seatbelt, and study the climate as we review Terra Nil.
Terra Nil is a puzzle game in the form of a city builder. You are tasked with terraforming a desolate wasteland, populating it with wildlife, and then recycling all of your structures to leave no trace of you being there. It’s actually a very relaxing game considering the base objective of the game, and you will balance humidity, toxicity, and temperature in order to bring life back to a desolate wasteland.
In order to successfully terraform a planet, you will use an array of buildings, and unique techniques to achieve your objective. This might be setting fire to grass so a forest can grow in the ashes, transporting moss to dump into the ocean to encourage kelp to grow, or even freezing the surrounding area to hyper-cool lava. The game is challenging, and even though there’s a handy undo button that can help you rectify mistakes, sometimes you will have to restart the specific phase you are on or restart the level altogether.
While this may sound frustrating, the game features a plethora of difficulty options, allowing you to tailor your Terra Nil experience to suit your style. Want an extreme challenge? Why not increase your resource cost? Prefer a more sandbox experience? Start with more resources. I found myself tweaking my game regularly, and I was particularly challenged on the Polar Biome. This is actually the strength of the game, encouraging the player to experiment by raising or lowering the world temperature, altering the weather, or tunneling rivers of water or lava to the next areas of the map to help with coverage. Every restart was on a different map, each delivering its own unique challenges.
There are optional objectives to achieve too, like having migratory birds return or small baitfish populating the ocean. Each optional objective had a handy guide to tell you what you should be aiming for, and you can tick off as many, or as little as you like. Once you have satisfied the initial phase objectives of terraforming, you are then tasked to encourage animals to come back. This mode sees you scan sections of the world you have created for optimal living conditions. It might be some deer that need open plains with a little forest, or deep oceans with ice for penguins. Seeing the animals return to the world gives the player a great sense of satisfaction.
Your final phase is to reclaim all of your gear and return to your airship, leaving no trace that you were ever there. once you have recycled everything, you take off and return to the overworld map to select a new area to terraform. Each new are adds a new gameplay mechanic or structure to use, keeping the gameplay loop engaging and exciting.
The art style looks somewhat like a hand-drawn painting, with 3D models rendered in an almost cel-shaded style. It looks good for the most part, but zooming in does show a few imperfections. I found it still did a good job of immersing me in the experience and spent a lot of time playing to see the end of the game. All of this is accompanied by beautiful dulcet piano tones and soft, relaxing music that builds on the atmosphere (no pun intended) of the game. It’s all very well done, and the score perfectly complements the art style and direction of the game.
Unfortunately for Terra Nil’s performance, the grass isn’t always greener and there are a lot of framerate issues when placing buildings, navigating the map, and in particular, almost unplayable when pathfinding on the Flooded City level towards the end of the game. I did encounter a couple of bugs that didn’t trigger the progression, leaving a line of code in the item description, and I had a crash to the Home Screen after loading into a new level each time. Despite these issues, I still really enjoyed my time on Terra Nil, and thankfully the game saves at every phase of terraforming, ensuring progress lost isn’t too far back.
The controls are difficult to grasp at first, using the right stick to move a cursor, and the left stick to pan the camera. While most strategies on Switch opt to lock the cursor in the center of the screen, Terra Nil’s use of the pointer can lead to some confusing and frustrating moments. Eventually, I got the hang of it, but I do wish there were some customisation options to help me out in the early stages. The game doesn’t support touchscreen controls for those wondering. For my vision-impaired Terraformers, there are no accessibility options, and I found myself struggling to find the cursor at times, so I recommend a bit more research to find out if this game is for you.
Terra Nil is reasonably priced at $30 AUD at the moment and will return to a standard price point of $37.50 after the promotional launch period. Due to the procedurally generated maps, it’s a different experience every time, and therefore I feel it has good replayability. While you can power through the campaign in about 5-6 hours, people looking to complete all of the optional objectives, as well as discovering all of the wildlife will easily be able to stretch that out to the 20-hour mark.
With a beautiful art style, a solemn and relaxing musical score, and interesting gameplay, Terra Nil is a great game that will provide hours of chilled-out puzzle gaming. Despite its performance issues, there’s a lot of fun and challenge to be had when trying to reclaim the world, and it’s a world in which you will lose yourself in. The robust difficulty settings will allow you to tailor Terra Nil’s experience to suit your needs, and optional objectives turn levels into hours-long missions. This is one reclaimed world that you may find yourself lost in.
So, What’s It Like?
Terra Nil is a unique Puzzle Game with city-building aspects.