Terra Nil
Review

Terra Nil (2023) is a strategy game where you use clean technology to bring back life 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. You navigate a sprawling, verdant, hand-painted environment where everything but the rocks move and breathe. A meditative soundtrack and stunning audio palette will accompany your efforts.

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. Yet even within a region, no two playthroughs will be the same.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Terra Nil 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 5 months ago.