You revive oceans with coral reefs and thickets of kelp in which sea turtles can thrive.

It’s viscerally satisfying, almost dreamlike work, slowly reviving dead, crisp-looking land with lush pine, bamboo, or mangrove forests. Terra Nil’s themes of rebirth and reconstruction are translated beautifully through its delightful visuals and an ASMR-like soundscape full of clicks, rain sounds, and wind riffling gently through the grass. Healing landscapes across Earth’s biomes is the ultimate comfort fantasy But the game also has an identity crisis, where these meditative tile-placement mechanics chafe against the complexity of its late-game systems. It’s a game for this era of climate anxiety, where we’ve gone past the climate “point of no return.” Healing landscapes across Earth’s biomes is the ultimate comfort fantasy - especially amid a sea of games premised on destruction and dominion - where reversing the toll of habitat destruction comes at the click of the mouse.

In this “reverse city builder,” as developer Free Lives has described it on the game’s Steam page, you rewild desiccated and barren land across four major biomes in a series of four scenarios. Terra Nil is a balm for this kind of aggressive gameplay. In Frostpunk, I force workers to endure 18-hour shifts and sawdust-gruel meals, all while living in an impromptu shantytown. In Factorio, I remind myself “the factory must grow” as I fight bug hordes that, understandably, attack my base as pollution saturates their settlements. If playing a simulator game is like playing god, then I’m certainly a wrathful one. Management sims have made me into a villain.

Terra nil platform