Saturday Morning Gaming: Terra Nil

I’m sure we’ve all played city-builders. From games like Sim City and Populous and Act Raiser to Dungeon Keeper and War For The Overworld to fully modern games like Sim City (don’t get this one) and Cities: Skylines (get this one instead), we’ve all been delighted with the idea that we could pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

Those of us who, instead, have wondered about hearing the screen door slamming, might want to play something else? Maybe?

Well, I have some good news. Terra Nil is one of the most wonderful, most relaxing games I’ve ever had the pleasure to play.

You start with a desiccated wasteland. Ugh. Look.

Ugh, that’s awful! Let’s pull out a little bit and see if it helps!

Okay. It doesn’t. So let’s put up a wind turbine…

Then… you may want to add a Toxin Scrubber to help clean up the horrible things that had been done to the soil…

Or you might want to drop a Water Pump and clean up toxins that way:

And the point is not to built an efficient city! It’s to build a perfectly inefficient ecosystem. Inefficient grasslands, inefficient rivers, and inefficient forests. Create inefficient wetlands and then inefficient woodlands! When the time is right, set the woodlands on fire and get a ground fire and then plant, again, in the ashes of the old growth and come back even stronger.

Every goal is to make the ground seem just a little more untouched. A little more unspoiled in the first place.

You start seeing bees. You start seeing butterflies. It’s downright gorgeous.

All in all, I’d say that it’s one of the most relaxing games I’ve ever played. You take a bit of land that has been screwed up and you unscrew it up.

Going into the game, I had suspected that it would amount to little more than an idle distraction. Here I am… saying “holy cow… it is so much more than the sum of its parts…”

Anyway, at this moment in time, the demo of the game is available for *FREE*. See for yourself how it’s a zen game that will help you fall asleep if you play it for 10 minutes before bed. Sadly, the release date is “2021” rather than “next week” so you’re going to be waiting a while for the whole thing, but the demo is the right price to check out for a half hour… and next thing you know, it’s a couple of hours later and you want a pleasant nap.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is opening menu for the game. All screenshots taken by the author.)