Terra Nil

Terra Nil is a casual simulation game where players use advanced technology and various tools to transform barren land into vibrant green environments.  You can create diverse landscapes and structures according to your vision, providing comfortable habitats for animals and enjoying a rewarding gameplay experience. Each game of Terra Nil starts with a completely different terrain, presenting players with various challenges. Use your ingenuity to transform the environment and enjoy the sense of accomplishment upon completion. If you enjoy ecological simulation games, don't miss Terra Nil!

Tools:

Reproducing the environment is not easy, especially when you only have 6 tools in hand. It is a water pump, a turbine, a soil purifier, a greenhouse to grow trees, an automatic lawn generator, and a stone generator. Each type of tool has its own function and needs to be used correctly to be effective. Specifically:

Turbine: You can only place it on rocks and close to a water source. Its propellers rotate continuously to generate power, which is needed for many manufacturing jobs.

Water pump: It will turn dry riverbeds full of water. Therefore, it is the perfect tool to create canals and trenches, providing water to the plains so that trees can grow.

Toxic purifier: Its function is to filter out toxins in the soil so that the soil is fertile again, ready for planting trees and crops.

Greenhouse: It resembles a small plant complex, taking water and nutrients from the soil to create greenery.

Automatic lawn generator: It gives you green grass plots to place in open areas.

Rock Maker: You need it to make more ice, which is needed to put the turbine on.

So, how would you combine these tools for nature’s regeneration?

Features:

A Symphony of Nature: One of the most captivating aspects of Terra Nil is its ability to create a calming atmosphere that immerses you in the beauty of your surroundings. The hand-painted environments are not only visually stunning but also designed to evoke tranquility. Soft, vibrant colors of the foliage combined with a soundtrack of relaxing music and gentle ambient sounds allow players to escape into a peaceful world of their own making. You will find solace in the soothing sounds of rustling leaves, flowing water, and the distant calls of wildlife as you work to restore balance to the ecosystem.

Creating Habitats for Wildlife: With the environment slowly revived, your attention turns to the animals that will call your reclaimed land home. Each ecosystem thrives with unique species that require specific habitats to flourish. As you cultivate the landscape, you’ll realize that the biodiversity of the environment is directly linked to your attentiveness to detail. By planting native vegetation and establishing safe breeding grounds, you enable various creatures to thrive. Whether it's the cheerful chirping of birds returning to their nests or the sight of deer peacefully grazing in the verdant fields, every element counts toward the grand symphony of life you are restoring.

The Process of Reclamation: After successfully revitalizing the land and welcoming wildlife back into their habitats, Terra Nil encourages you to embody the commitment to sustainability. Part of your mission involves recycling the structures and technology you employed throughout the restoration process. Rather than leaving remnants of your construction behind, the game projects a powerful message of conservation. By dismantling your buildings and using eco-friendly methods to recycle materials, you practice a true ethos of environmental stewardship, ensuring that what you leave behind is a landscape untouched by human trace, ready for nature to flourish on its own.

Emphasizing Environmental Education: Terra Nil doesn’t just incorporate gameplay; it subtly stitches in an educational narrative about ecology and conservation. As you navigate through each level, you gain insights into the intricate relationships between flora, fauna, and their ecosystems. The gameplay acts as a catalyst for an appreciation of natural harmony, fostering awareness about the fragility of our environments and the importance of protecting them. By engaging with the various elements of nature, players become more conscious of the real-world implications of ecological degradation and the power they hold in making a change.

Highlights:

Terra Nil offers a range of unique features that set it apart from traditional video games:

Environmental Restoration: The core objective of Terra Nil is to bring life back to barren wastelands. Players start with a desolate landscape and must strategically place various structures, such as wind turbines, solar panels, and water pumps, to create a balanced ecosystem.

Ecosystem Management: You’ll need to carefully manage resources like water, soil, and flora as you work to restore the environment. Balancing these resources is essential for the ecosystem to thrive.

Renewable Energy: Harness the power of renewable energy sources like wind and solar to generate electricity and power your restoration efforts. Terra Nil emphasizes sustainability and eco-friendly solutions.

Unique Challenges: Each level in Terra Nil presents different challenges, requiring players to adapt their strategies. From desert landscapes to polluted wastelands, you’ll encounter a diverse range of environments that need your help.

No Negative Consequences: What makes Terra Nil even more appealing is that there are no negative consequences for failure. You can experiment freely, learn from your mistakes, and refine your approach to achieve success.

Useful Tips:

One of the mistakes we made early on was to drop Irrigators and Toxin Scrubbers all over the place without really paying attention to your resources - that's the "leaf" resource in the top left of the screen.

The best way to start rejuvenating the wasteland is to place down the Turbines on every available rock, and then place down Toxin Scrubbers to cover as much as the territory as you can. You can place Toxin Scrubbers on the edge of the allowed area, so they slightly overlap, which helps maximize your coverage. See what we mean in the image below.

You want to cover as much area as possible before you start placing down the Irrigators so that you can maximize the returns on your leaf investment. Creating a grid (like the image below), means you'll get the most out of placing them down.

You can get the most coverage by using the Irrigator pieces like a Tetris puzzle, using the L-shaped pieces to create squares of coverage. You can do this by pressing R to rotate the selection. If you run out of available spots for Toxfin Scrubbers, you'll need to use the Excavator and the Calcifier. Use the Excavator to dig trenches to fill with water, and then use the Calcifier to create rock so you can place down more Turbines to cover areas that were previously unreachable.

Each animal requires a unique habitat to thrive in. You can see this by using the animal scanner to check each requirement for each animal. It will show you what's missing in the menu. Once you've reached the final stage (the recycling stage) you can mess around with the environments to your heart's content, as you probably have access to a lot of Leaf now.

Don't be afraid to destroy things, set things on fire, or otherwise alter the landscape. It's also a good idea to try and complete the "Optional Goals" in the order that they appear in the drop-down menu, as this can give you some structure and hopefully set you up to have the appropriate temperature and humidity for the animals to survive in your new bountiful wilderness.

Player Comments:

Purchased hoping it would be a relaxing, cozy city-builder. In reality, I don't think it's actually any of those, but I am still finding enjoyment.Things I enjoy: The art styles and designs. The low stakes and generally low difficulty. The ability to restart a level or phase at any time. The reverse city-builder. The relatively accurate depiction of multiple biomes and ecosystems. The chill music. The variety of environments.Things I find less enjoyable: The ability to build yourself into an unsolvable corner. The mandatory 10 photo stars required to complete a level. The occasional bug in level design preventing biomes from expanding. The sometimes mysterious criteria for animals.

This game is really special. The vibes are impeccable, and while the game is challenging at normal difficulty, the developers allow the player to customize the level of difficulty down to every single detail, even exposing the developer debug console with cheats. You can play this game however you like. Again, it's a really special game.

This is a very relaxing and rewarding game. I don't think it's necessarily worth it at full price, but if you really enjoy games that are casual, relaxing, slow paced, visually appealing, and eco/environmentally conscience, then this game is a solid win, inside or outside of any promotional sales. Pick this one up when you get tired of your normal genre of game. It'll make you feel better, and is good for a mental reset.

I love that it is cozy and you can take your time to appreciate the gameplay, or dive right into strategizing if that is what you'd prefer. As a relatively novice gamer, I'm playing on difficulty level 2/4 and have had almost no issues so far, so I might up the level if I want more of a strategy challenge. Very soothing to play and feel like you are restoring something!

Summary:

Terra Nil is a unique construction simulation game where players need to restore a destroyed land to its original natural state. In the game, players will face many challenges, such as searching and collecting resources on the map, building factories and facilities to deal with pollution, replanting vegetation and trees, and more. The main goal of the game is to achieve a completely natural state with zero human intervention through the process of restoring the land through rational planning and management.