Terra
Nil

Terra Nil (2023) is a strategy game where you use clean technology to bring life back to a barren world. It's a city-building game where you aren't building a city at all, but a clean thriving ecology. It raises interesting themes of how humanity plays an important role in a healthy environment, as well as the importance of playing our part with longevity and light footprints in mind.

---

Play involves managing your resources to place and control a series of interrelated systems. You start by setting up a water system, slowly purifying the soil, and cultivating pioneer greenery. From there you embark on more complex tasks; restoring biodiversity, fixing the climate, introducing wildlife, and finally recycling all the structures you used to get there, leaving the environment pristine.

As you progress you learn to navigate the sprawling, hand-painted environment where everything but the rocks move and breathe. There's a meditative soundtrack and reactive audio to accompany your interactions that create a sense of calm progress. Each time you play, the world is different and has unique challenges. Each region of the game has its own flavour and procedural generation palette.

The result is a game with an environmental theme where your presence is required to bring life back to the world. More than that though, it's a fascinating strategy about balancing resources with progress and your footprint on the land.

---

Our examiner, Jo Robertson, first checked Terra Nil 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 8 weeks ago.