Terra Nil News

Badge-farming might be behind some big Steam Next Fest demo player numbers

Yesterday I wrote about eco-strategy game Terra Nil’s demo, which went gangbusters during last week’s Steam Next Fest and shot up into the top 50 most played games on Valve’s storefront. Well, turns out that might be at least partly down to a practice called badge-farming. That’s according to industry pundit Simon Carless’ latest GameDiscoverCo newsletter, anyway.

Of all the demos featured in this past week’s Steam Next Fest, indie environmental ‘reverse city-builder’ Terra Nil has performed exceedingly well for itself. The demo has cropped up among the top 50 on the most-played games on Steam over the weekend, and is currently nestled between Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and Vampire Survivors. Not bad for a chill game about rewilding a barren planet.

Hi everyone, we're back with another region update

Today we'd like to present a snapshot of the new polar region, replete with its own challenges, mechanics, animals, environments and buildings.

Use magma to power geothermal generators. Melt snow to purify the ground beneath before restoring the snowy climate once more. Freeze lava to create rocks to grow lichens and restore the majestic kelp forests of the frigid ocean. And perhaps you'll even spot an aurora. You can see a little of our new lava, tundra, snow, and more in the image above.

In addition to the polar region, we've overhauled the climate mechanics of the game to have a far more significant effect on gameplay than in the demo. We have various parameters that have region-wide effects when certain thresholds are reached.

Next, we're tackling a completely different challenge, the restoration of a former urban city. Where before, Terra Nil's wastelands have been empty, the city turns that idea on its head. You're going to need to recycle as you go to make it work!

We know you're all excited to get your hands on the game and we're all excited for you to play it! We just ask that you continue to be patient while we make the best version of Terra Nil we can imagine!

As always, any and all are welcome to join for the ride of our development. As we continue to reach major milestones, we'll keep posting on steam, but if you want to see under the hood a little more, join us on discord or our weekly twitch stream.

https://discord.gg/freelives
https://twitch.tv/free_lives

Until next time,

- Free Lives

Tropical region and future progress

Hi everyone, and happy 2022 to you all!

It's looking like it's going to be an exciting year for Terra Nil and we'd love to share some of the progress we've made since releasing the demo.

We've been hard at work down in sunny South Africa, working on our next major region, which is tropical. We've got a wealth of new mechanics, environments, buildings and animals. Manta rays dart between coral reefs, you can spread shade cloth to encourage the growth of rainforests, the new monorail can pass high above the mangrove forests, and more! The image above is just a teaser of what's available.

Once the tropical region is done, we're going to be moving to our polar region, complete with snow, tundra and lava. It'll also have it's own mechanics, challenges and animal species.

We've love to have you along for the ride of our development. We're going to post major milestones here on steam, but if you're interested in a more granular process, hop on over to our Discord or weekly dev stream on Twitch (you don't even need an account).

https://discord.gg/freelives
https://www.twitch.tv/free_lives

- Free Lives

The new wave of city builders and management games tackling climate change

Whichever way you look at it, most videogames are anthropocentric. We view nearly everything through the lens of what we are: humans. This is no surprise, and isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it affects how games explore the planet we live on. We're always harvesting natural resources to build, expand, and wage war, but a new wave of city builders and management games is steering the focus away from what we want and toward what Earth needs from us.

Previously I have written about how city builders and factory simulators never really do anything to tackle the effects of industry on the world around us - we face the stark reality of this every day as our summers get hotter, our winters colder, and weather all over the world becomes more chaotic. Some city-building games do pay lip service to climate change and pollution, but there's an assumption that any game which focuses on these topics would create miserable busywork, as if the same couldn't be said about trudging up and down hills to mine for resources, or laying out elaborate traffic solutions.

Despite this, there are a handful of games and studios that are dedicated to investigating climate change. Leading the charge is the Independent Game Developers Association Climate Special Interest Group [IGDA Climate SIG], a network of developers concerned with making games that both inform and entertain. Among their ranks you'll find games like Terra Nil, Imagine Earth, and Among Ripples: Shallow Waters. There are two uniform themes between these three games. The first is that they are all concerned with the environment. The second is that they are all fun, despite their commitment to a troublesome, often dismal theme.

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