Terra Nil

I got this for free with a subscription on another platform. Terra Nil is a simple, relaxing, slow-paced puzzle game with varying difficulty levels, none of which are too challenging. IMHO it's best enjoyed on mobile touch devices, due to its simplicity and casual character. The mechanics are not too many and each are super simple. You will have seen them all in a relatively short time, and applying them is easy. Throughout, the game tries to relax rather than challenge the player. It starts with a tutorial that eases players into the game, and introduces new mechanics in rapid (maybe too rapid) succession. There isn't much of a story, no hard science, and not much tech background either. So, if you are a techie nerd, this is most certainly not the simulation you are looking for. Terra Nil works well as a casual puzzle game with pleasing visuals, that is rather short and therefor best enjoyed in short bursts; during your daily commute, or a lunch break. If that's you, then you might fall in love. Otherwise, you may feel a bit disappointed at the lack of content and overall challenge.

Terra Nil's gameplay involves transforming barren landscapes into lush, thriving environments through three basic steps- first, creating water and arable land, second, creating specific biomes for plants and animals to inhabit, and third, ensuring that the animals have all their needs met, while picking up after yourself by recycling all the equipment you used to achieve the first two steps, leaving behind a pristine wilderness. The challenge is in the limitations placed on you- you might have to thaw permafrost to reach the ground, clean up clouds of radiation, dredge the ocean to make your own land, or find a way to make your equipment accessible by boat or monorail during the recycling phase. It's fun puzzling it out, but there are only 12 levels and it's not particularly challenging- on the second highest difficulty level, I never once ran out of resources. The brevity, combined with some annoying little problems, make it hard to recommend buying this unless it's on sale. I wouldn't go so far as to call the game unfinished, but it feels rushed out. As an example, the final level is... the third from the end. This wasn't a bug, the other levels are literally locked off and unplayable until you beat what was obviously intended to be the last level of the game. You take off into space, leaving the planet behind as the credits roll... and then there are two more, slightly easier levels. Completing them too rewards you with nothing. Getting 100 percent completion on every level rewards you with... also nothing. Sometimes an object you should be able to move with the monorail will be unselectable, or hidden behind an animal's status with no way to reach it, or tooltips will hide the area of effect of something you're trying to build. It's not game-breaking but it's irritating. I was expecting to learn something about real life ecology or at least get an interesting story, but the game offers neither. It's disappointingly shallow. There's missed potential here.

Other reviews of too short, or too simple are acknowledged. This is a game for when you just want to chill, and enjoy making an ecosystem better, instead of destroying it. The puzzles - if that is what you want to call it - add just enough to make it an interesting and relaxing evening.

One of those gems you wish they were longer. You goal is to make a planet livable again. Really a game that make you feel good, when you see the result of all your work. When you start a map you wonder how it will be possible to make it green again. And then, step by step, trees, birds, water, fishes, all the fauna is there and the place is full of life. You have 3 phases in each map. First you need to grow the grass and clean the water, then in a second time, you grow the biomes (forest, coral, fields of flowers, ect), and at last you discover all the animals, clean everything up and leave. Once you complete all the four maps, you can redo them in their harder version. The main difficult will be to organize the various biomes you can create in order to gather up all of the conditions necessary for the animals to live there. You can restart the map anytime you want, since it generated at random you will not have the same twice. You can also just restart one of the 3 phases so you don't have to start from scratch. A really sweet game you must play.

I like the idea of the game. We need more of such environmental oriented games for future generations 👍🏻 It's a shame the game doesn't have Ukrainian localization though (I hope it will be added soon).