Terra Nil offers a fresh take on the City Builder genre. Instead of creating a booming cityscape, you’re doing the opposite and making the map fit for wildlife to flourish. In many ways, Terra Nil is a ‘reverse’ City Builder, and there’s nothing else like it on the market.
Terra Nil delivers a powerful message, but even that pales compared to the developers’ $95,000 donation to the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
On top of that, Terra Nil recently won an award for innovation at Games for Change.
If you follow Terra Nil on Twitter, you may remember this was the plan from day one. Before release back in March 2023, the developers took to Twitter to announce donation plans. It’s great to see that pledge come to fruition.
On June 20th, 2023, Free Lives posted the following message on Steam:
” Thanks to all of you who played Terra Nil,
we’ve donated $95,000 to the Endangered Wildlife Trust!
We traveled to see their conservation efforts first-hand and had this short film, “The Nature of Gaming,” produced to continue highlighting their work. It was a humbling experience. We wish more people could see these majestic creatures in their natural habitats but also see how human disruption puts them at risk… This is what you contributed to by playing Terra Nil.”
You can check out the ‘Nature of Gaming’ film on Free Lives’ official YouTube channel.
What does the future hold for Terra Nil?
A common criticism among Steam reviews is Terra Nil is too short. Even for a player like myself, who is dreadful at City Builders, I finished the campaign in 6 hours.
Many have reported completing the game in far less. I refuse to rate games based on length, but after beating Terra Nil, I still wanted to see more.
Fortunately, this criticism has been heard by the developers, and in their last post on Steam, they closed with the following:
“Along the way, we’re still working on adding more to Terra Nil. We will let you know when we have more to share! Thank you for all of your support, and we hope Terra Nil can provide a little bit of hope.”
Sadly, there are no dates, but if that means an expansion is on the cards for Terra Nil, I look forward to it.
Further Reading
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- Top 15 Best Bullet Heaven Games - November 22, 2023
- Terra Nil developers donate $95,000 to Endangered Wildlife Trust - July 21, 2023
This is fantastic news! I’m so happy to see developers donating money to such a worthy cause.