LONDON: In 2020, the streaming giant Netflix began testing mobile games in certain markets. These games were accessible to subscribers at no additional cost. A year later, the company began hiring experienced individuals from the gaming industry as a clear statement of its intent to make an impression on the lucrative sector. Now we’re starting to see the return on their strategic investment.
“Terra Nil” is one of these first-generation efforts and it is a thoughtful and engaging game that bodes well for Netflix subscribers while also being available to purchase for PC. It is at its heart a reclamation journey. Unlike traditional simulators that ask you to turn a blank canvas into a busy city or lavish theme park, this game drops you into a barren and polluted landscape and challenges you to turn it back into a thriving ecosystem before removing all signs of human presence.
A peaceful, gentle and atmospheric platform sees you arrive on islands, polar tundra or to ruined cities on an airship with the task of bringing life to the desolation. Its clear climate-change references aside, this is more of a puzzle than a simulator, forcing players to carefully use resources to develop several layers of one environment, constantly accessing new features and tools, before finally having to clear up all human presence leaving the reclaimed space behind.
Meanwhile, an end-of-chapter breakdown of all the things you could have done to perfect the environment rather than just complete it gives the game greater longevity.
Polluted seas can be transformed to host whales, bees’ nest in trees you planted, penguins frolic on ice sheets that your weather engineering created while parrots fly at the top of tropical forests only made possible due to rivers you blasted out of the rock. Controlled fires and other terraforming features open newer tools, buildings and devices to your inventory with a series of mini-missions determined by the new ecosystem’s temperature, something you can affect through cloud seeding or releasing seismic charges.
The game can be fiddly, and its instructions are well presented but cumbersome. What’s more, icons and tools can look similar — requiring a bit of back-and-forth referencing of the tutorial clips as it is easy to forget which device is which. The game would possibly benefit from a better saving function, but this would perhaps take away the challenge of conserving resources, which means that earlier game profligacy can result in nervy closing stages where every move counts.
“Terra Nil’s” marketing describes it as an “intricate environmental strategy game.”
Overall, however, there is a simpleness to the game’s essence that can belie some of the complexity of tool selection and unit placement. Seeing birds fly over your hard-reclaimed land and the sound of life returning to what started as a startling silence is genuinely rewarding and a real attraction for casual gamers looking to take their mind off a long bus journey or fill in time while they wait for a flight.
