Succeeding in Terra Nil isn’t as easy as simply putting things where you want them to go. This can be a test in planning, because if you don’t think ahead you might have to create infrastructure to remove any hard to reach buildings. This means recycling all of your buildings. And finally, during the third phase your goal is to remove any trace of your interference. In the second phase, you’ll further refine these patches into specific biomes like beaches, forests, etc. In the first phase you have to establish sources of power, and purify the soil to create green patches. This lead to some early frustration for me, but it grew on me over time.

While the campaign mode does ramp up its complexity and explain its basic mechanics-it also leaves a lot of details for you to discover through tinkering and tool tip perusal. There isn’t much in the way of a tutorial for Terra Nil. In fact, failure seems part of Terra Nil’s design. There is no timer, so Terra Nil is a game you can play at your own pace-and I suggest you take it slow and plan each move, because it’s easy to get stuck without resources before you complete your objective. But instead of leaving a network of machinery and various buildings behind, your goal is to leave no trace. Terra Nil is what developer Free Lives calls a “reverse city builder.” Your job is to take a barren landscape and reintroduce flora and fauna. But Terra Nil isn’t about building civilization–it’s about rebuilding a wrecked ecosystem. City builders have been around for over thirty years, and mostly consist of building various types of structures while balancing the needs of people.

It’s rare to come across a video game with a novel twist on a tried-and-true genre.

Terra nil flooded city