Really interesting game! A great balance in a game where time isn't pressuring as it the case in many other building games. This combined with the soundtrack allows for great ambience and a very chill game experience while remaining a game, with it's goals and challenges. There is enough strategic depth to make replaying a map interesting. Only downside is sometimes the visuals do not help when there is a lot of clutter. Would definitely recommend, and will be looking forward to the commercial version!
Friend, even if there is a commercial version, there's no reason you won't be able to play this one. The paid one will have different graphics and more content, that's all.
I think the difficulty curve needs to be worked on a bit. It feels like there's a very steep difficulty jump from level II to level III, as you can be level II without fully understanding the mechanics of how the boats work. I've also found it's a bit annoying to have to restart same part over and over again, but to get so close each time.
Hi, I absolutely adore this cute little game, and I had 3 ideas for future developments of this game.
1: I was wondering if there were any plans or ideas around level builders/community content? I would LOVE to have more levels to play, and if the community could handle that instead of you, the developer, that might give a pseudo infinite amount of play time!
2: When I unlocked the coastal levels I was looking forward to some kind of coastal or beach biome terrain to play around with, like a coral reef in the oceanic areas, or other types of oceanic biomes. I personally think there could be more to do with the ocean areas of the map, but that's just an idea :)
3: What if we could go to more islands? And in the end we transform a whole, desolate planet into this massive vibrant ecosystem, the rocket ship at the end of the levels feels like a nod or step in that direction, and having more levels/content with more challenges (or honestly repeated challenges) would be absolutely great from a player's perspective!
Nonetheless, this is probably one of my favorite indie games I've ever played, and I am so excited for the potential future developments, hope you had a good new year! <3
I'm coming accross an issue in the mountain level whereby despite loading all the available trees with beehives I can't get enough flowers. The trees generate quite closely together so that by the time infrastructure is in place there arent enough tiles available to fill with flowers to meet the goal.
Despite that I am having a lovely time and will defintely be coming back to try again. It's really beautiful and satisfying to figure out.
My best guess is "fill as much space with flowers as possible from the initial trees, leave a dead zone around it as firebreak, burn it and grow a forest, put greenery around the forest, use the trees at the edge of the forest to hold beehives for flowers".
However, even with that I haven't yet been successful; getting all that set up usually results in running out of money too soon.
I keep getting stuck on mountain — either I can't create enough greenery to get to tier 2, or I get to tier 2 and then can't simultaneously get enough fynbos and forest because all the trees are in one place (can't make two separate patches of fynbos to burn one for ash for the forest without ruining the other).
Which is a shame, because everything up to that was very smooth and pleasant.
Hi! Thanks for a wonderful game. Challenging yet calming and beutiful to look at.
I was wondering if you have considered any language translations? From an educational point of view, it would be great to introduce kids to this kind of thinking, without the language barrier.
I'm sure there would be plenty of people interested in contributing to this if there was a way.
This is a really neat take on city building. I'd love to see the environmentalism taken to the next step, with animals, ecosystems, balancing of predators and prey, etc.
I downloaded this game without paying and was absolutely delighted with what I was playing. Just came back to pay my dues and my respects.
This game is beautiful and inventive. I'm so glad people are thinking about this kind of simulator, the sake of our future depends on imaginative solutions.
I really want to like this game because of it’s theme, and also because the pixel art here looks beautiful. But unforunately I’m a bit frustrated with the difficulty.
Why do the Steam Plants cost so much? It takes 1000 resources to create the weather system, I wasn’t aware of that while I was on stage II and so now I’m just screwed. I was hoping to get some extra resources by recycling buildings, but the conveyance ports never work! Can the boat not travel through a water pump? I can’t remove the water pump cause I don’t have the weather system, and I can’t have a weather system because the water pump prevents me from recycling stuff. All I can do restart (this happened twice already)
Maybe the problem is that I went in, thinking this would be a relaxing experience, and only then found out that I should’ve been strategic and saved up resources. (I thought 700 would be enough…)
I will restart again and I will complete it, because overall the game is worth it, but this is not a 5/5 for me sadly.
Nevermind, I tried again and the game is not that difficult. I’m sorry for being so negative in my previous comment. Finished a couple more levels, this game is very satisfying.
I mentioned your game in my article Why Do Indie Games Use Pixel Art. The reason is because of how tiny your game file is and how, even though it's still in development, it received over 300 five star reviews!
May I use an image from the itch.io page in the article? The image would contain a caption with a concise description, credit to the creator and link back to the itch.io page.
Hi vfqd - do you have an email address for a quick Q&A?
I am writing on behalf of Funland, an all-new, subscription-based gaming publication. Our first issue is forthcoming, and we are looking for exciting, creative games to preview.
We thought Terra Nil would be a good game to feature, and I would like to ask you some questions and get some more information on the game if at all possible.
I am already addicted to this game. It is super relaxing, and I love the ecological message. It seems straightforward initially, but you really do have to use your brain
Mesmerizing, addicting, soothing, satisfying game! It is so beautiful and so well-thought-out. I love the idea of re-wilding a wasteland. (Just finished the mountain level!)
Suggestions for future updates: - more content - easier mode :)) - sandbox mode - save/load game
P.S. I know the pixel font used on this game page does match the game, but it's actually hard to read text in this font! Hope you can consider changing it to a more readable font.
The game is good, relaxing and mind-blowing. Although it is understandable for what is the game doing from just looking at the tools the player can use, it is recommended to add some instructions in the game to remind the players of the control (Yeah, I just did not see the instructions on the above introduction and play the game, how silly am I)
So I started this game, and at first I really loved it. Then I got to mountain, and it became an unfun micro-manage-y slog-fest. I'm on something like my 8th attempt. Kept getting idiotic river layouts or just no rivers at all and it's just literally impossible. Fucking excavators are just too expensive and too big to work with. The few times I make it to tier 3, I simply don't have enough money to get the weather running, and because of the dumbass river layout I can't send anything via boat.
Instead of being a fun, relaxing game like I wanted this level is a re-roll nightmare where you can easily get 100% stuck based solely on RNG, repeatedly. I love the idea of this game and the over all implementation is really good, but the random generation and the balance are abysmal for mountain. I would really love to play through the rest of this game, but I don't want to attempt Mountain for the 10th time. It's repetitive and unfun.
Hey! I'm really sad to hear that's been your experience. I'll definitely take your feedback on board. If you want to DM me on twitter at https://twitter.com/vfqd_ I can give you some dev cheats if you want to continue
The zip file should unpack into a new directory, not into same directory. I.e. It should unpack into Terra Nil, not into my current directory and pollute the content with random files.
It would be nice if the main binary file had an executable bit set out of the box in the archive. This can be done with zip, and definitively with tar.xz
No option to play with vsync. The main menu is 600 fps, and the game is 180 fps. It is nice that I can do it, but option to limit fps would be nice for laptops / battery operated devices. This happen with both OpenGL and Vulkan renderer.
Game works perfectly with Unity's Vulkan renderer (-force-vulkan). I would suggest making it a default (in Unity, go to project settings, to Graphics, then Linux graphics API, and set to manual, make Vulkan first, OpenGL second).
No option to launch in windowed mode or on a specified monitor. Would be nice to maybe have a shortcut for that.
Other than that looks perfect. It even works perfectly on my weird monitor (1920x1920) with its weird aspect ratio.
The game is a splendid experience that doesn't enforce any time limits, is easy to pickup and made me play it for multiple hours. I absolutely love this and will pay money for it in the coming future - if it gets polished and refined. The UI needs a bit of love, I didn't instantly notice the second tab of buildings, and the "exit" button in pause is confusing - IMHO it should say "quit game" and be marked with red. Also, I've passed the peninsula level, and accidentaly exit the game, and when I opened it up it said "island unlocked" but it stays locked. Anyway, great game, wish you the best with it!
This is an amazing game, and I definitely would've paid money for this if I had the means too. It would'nt run properly on my pc at first, because I only had a ryzen 3400g and only used the onboard graphics, but I now know that it was the amd FreeSync in the radeon software. So if you have problems running it probably turn off freesync in the amd software. Overall amazing game, refreshing twist on citybuilder games, and beautiful art.
Lovely game. Great work on the ambient and music, it makes for a really soothing experience! The island was quite a challenge! I just barely made it. All in all, surely worth paying for ^_^
2 bugs that were quite apparent: - When accidently placing a toxin scrubber out of range of electricity, then placing any others nearby that do have electricity have no effect - The bee sprites gfx seem to break down into weird yellow pixely globs when its raining
Oh yea, I was also kinda hoping that when after I finished the island I'd be rewarded with a "Congrats, you made it!" screen with some bonus gfx/sfx.
Why the hell do you have "Exit" button on score popup?! It's on the place where "continue" button always lies. I accidentally pressed Exit both times. After Floodplains it exited to Windows and I've lost my progress. Game wrote "mountain unlocked", but mountain is not clickable.
Sorry to sound negative. I Love the game, but this thing is super frustrating. Is there a cheat code or save file to not replay Floodplains again?
Hi there! I had the same issue as keks24. I also realllly like your game haha. Could you send me that cheat to so I can skip the Mountain level that I truly finished but then clicked on exit EXIdentally ? ;)
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Comments
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Really interesting game! A great balance in a game where time isn't pressuring as it the case in many other building games. This combined with the soundtrack allows for great ambience and a very chill game experience while remaining a game, with it's goals and challenges. There is enough strategic depth to make replaying a map interesting. Only downside is sometimes the visuals do not help when there is a lot of clutter.
Would definitely recommend, and will be looking forward to the commercial version!
i really hope there is not paid versio
so that i can continue playing
Friend, even if there is a commercial version, there's no reason you won't be able to play this one. The paid one will have different graphics and more content, that's all.
Omg! I love this game!
I think the difficulty curve needs to be worked on a bit. It feels like there's a very steep difficulty jump from level II to level III, as you can be level II without fully understanding the mechanics of how the boats work. I've also found it's a bit annoying to have to restart same part over and over again, but to get so close each time.
Hi, I absolutely adore this cute little game, and I had 3 ideas for future developments of this game.
1: I was wondering if there were any plans or ideas around level builders/community content? I would LOVE to have more levels to play, and if the community could handle that instead of you, the developer, that might give a pseudo infinite amount of play time!
2: When I unlocked the coastal levels I was looking forward to some kind of coastal or beach biome terrain to play around with, like a coral reef in the oceanic areas, or other types of oceanic biomes. I personally think there could be more to do with the ocean areas of the map, but that's just an idea :)
3: What if we could go to more islands? And in the end we transform a whole, desolate planet into this massive vibrant ecosystem, the rocket ship at the end of the levels feels like a nod or step in that direction, and having more levels/content with more challenges (or honestly repeated challenges) would be absolutely great from a player's perspective!
Nonetheless, this is probably one of my favorite indie games I've ever played, and I am so excited for the potential future developments, hope you had a good new year! <3
Really loving this!
I'm coming accross an issue in the mountain level whereby despite loading all the available trees with beehives I can't get enough flowers. The trees generate quite closely together so that by the time infrastructure is in place there arent enough tiles available to fill with flowers to meet the goal.
Despite that I am having a lovely time and will defintely be coming back to try again. It's really beautiful and satisfying to figure out.
My best guess is "fill as much space with flowers as possible from the initial trees, leave a dead zone around it as firebreak, burn it and grow a forest, put greenery around the forest, use the trees at the edge of the forest to hold beehives for flowers".
However, even with that I haven't yet been successful; getting all that set up usually results in running out of money too soon.
I keep getting stuck on mountain — either I can't create enough greenery to get to tier 2, or I get to tier 2 and then can't simultaneously get enough fynbos and forest because all the trees are in one place (can't make two separate patches of fynbos to burn one for ash for the forest without ruining the other).
Which is a shame, because everything up to that was very smooth and pleasant.
Hi! Thanks for a wonderful game. Challenging yet calming and beutiful to look at.
I was wondering if you have considered any language translations? From an educational point of view, it would be great to introduce kids to this kind of thinking, without the language barrier.
I'm sure there would be plenty of people interested in contributing to this if there was a way.
I really love this game! I need to try and find similar games - I love the strategy and the concept.
This game is awesome! Just curious, what engine/language is it written in?
Unity
This is a really neat take on city building. I'd love to see the environmentalism taken to the next step, with animals, ecosystems, balancing of predators and prey, etc.
Beautiful!
Nice game
great game
I downloaded this game without paying and was absolutely delighted with what I was playing. Just came back to pay my dues and my respects.
This game is beautiful and inventive. I'm so glad people are thinking about this kind of simulator, the sake of our future depends on imaginative solutions.
Thank you!
Just want to drop by and say that this is a really fun & challenging game!
I really want to like this game because of it’s theme, and also because the pixel art here looks beautiful. But unforunately I’m a bit frustrated with the difficulty.
Why do the Steam Plants cost so much? It takes 1000 resources to create the weather system, I wasn’t aware of that while I was on stage II and so now I’m just screwed. I was hoping to get some extra resources by recycling buildings, but the conveyance ports never work! Can the boat not travel through a water pump? I can’t remove the water pump cause I don’t have the weather system, and I can’t have a weather system because the water pump prevents me from recycling stuff. All I can do restart (this happened twice already)
Maybe the problem is that I went in, thinking this would be a relaxing experience, and only then found out that I should’ve been strategic and saved up resources. (I thought 700 would be enough…)
I will restart again and I will complete it, because overall the game is worth it, but this is not a 5/5 for me sadly.
Nevermind, I tried again and the game is not that difficult. I’m sorry for being so negative in my previous comment. Finished a couple more levels, this game is very satisfying.
Looking forward to whatever comes next!
Nice game! Challenging and fun =)
Nice Game!
Hello VFQD,
I mentioned your game in my article Why Do Indie Games Use Pixel Art. The reason is because of how tiny your game file is and how, even though it's still in development, it received over 300 five star reviews!
May I use an image from the itch.io page in the article? The image would contain a caption with a concise description, credit to the creator and link back to the itch.io page.
That's absolutely fine! Hope your article goes well :)
Thank you.
I'm excited to watch Terra Nil develop. :D
Hi vfqd - do you have an email address for a quick Q&A?
I am writing on behalf of Funland, an all-new, subscription-based gaming publication. Our first issue is forthcoming, and we are looking for exciting, creative games to preview.
We thought Terra Nil would be a good game to feature, and I would like to ask you some questions and get some more information on the game if at all possible.
Thanks!
Hey! Pop me a mail at sam@freelives.net
That is just what I was going to say; this is 2D Islanders! I just found it now and it looks gorgeous.
I yet to beat the island it is so bloody hard!
I am already addicted to this game. It is super relaxing, and I love the ecological message. It seems straightforward initially, but you really do have to use your brain
Mesmerizing, addicting, soothing, satisfying game! It is so beautiful and so well-thought-out. I love the idea of re-wilding a wasteland. (Just finished the mountain level!)
Suggestions for future updates:
- more content
- easier mode :))
- sandbox mode
- save/load game
P.S. I know the pixel font used on this game page does match the game, but it's actually hard to read text in this font! Hope you can consider changing it to a more readable font.
doesn't launch on lower-end intel computers
Absolutely adored playing this game! Wishing there were even more levels to play as I’ve become quite hooked.
Would you consider a large sandbox level for some fun unrestricted terraforming in this beautiful pixel art?
The game is good, relaxing and mind-blowing. Although it is understandable for what is the game doing from just looking at the tools the player can use, it is recommended to add some instructions in the game to remind the players of the control (Yeah, I just did not see the instructions on the above introduction and play the game, how silly am I)
Keep it up!
This looks sick!
damn, looking at the animations, this is really well-done! good luck on completing this project!
nice game but good god
the mountain
i hate it
:/ sorry to hear that, thanks for the feedback
nice :D
So I started this game, and at first I really loved it. Then I got to mountain, and it became an unfun micro-manage-y slog-fest. I'm on something like my 8th attempt. Kept getting idiotic river layouts or just no rivers at all and it's just literally impossible. Fucking excavators are just too expensive and too big to work with. The few times I make it to tier 3, I simply don't have enough money to get the weather running, and because of the dumbass river layout I can't send anything via boat.
Instead of being a fun, relaxing game like I wanted this level is a re-roll nightmare where you can easily get 100% stuck based solely on RNG, repeatedly. I love the idea of this game and the over all implementation is really good, but the random generation and the balance are abysmal for mountain. I would really love to play through the rest of this game, but I don't want to attempt Mountain for the 10th time. It's repetitive and unfun.
Hey! I'm really sad to hear that's been your experience. I'll definitely take your feedback on board. If you want to DM me on twitter at https://twitter.com/vfqd_ I can give you some dev cheats if you want to continue
i found the re-roll aspect to make the game more relaxing
it's like solitaire, sometimes you just get a bad deck so you shuffle em up and try again
would be cool to be able to infinitely undo though
This game is gorgeous :D
Few comment, mostly for Linux.
Other than that looks perfect. It even works perfectly on my weird monitor (1920x1920) with its weird aspect ratio.
The game is a splendid experience that doesn't enforce any time limits, is easy to pickup and made me play it for multiple hours. I absolutely love this and will pay money for it in the coming future - if it gets polished and refined. The UI needs a bit of love, I didn't instantly notice the second tab of buildings, and the "exit" button in pause is confusing - IMHO it should say "quit game" and be marked with red. Also, I've passed the peninsula level, and accidentaly exit the game, and when I opened it up it said "island unlocked" but it stays locked. Anyway, great game, wish you the best with it!
This is an amazing game, and I definitely would've paid money for this if I had the means too. It would'nt run properly on my pc at first, because I only had a ryzen 3400g and only used the onboard graphics, but I now know that it was the amd FreeSync in the radeon software. So if you have problems running it probably turn off freesync in the amd software. Overall amazing game, refreshing twist on citybuilder games, and beautiful art.
Lovely game. Great work on the ambient and music, it makes for a really soothing experience!
The island was quite a challenge! I just barely made it. All in all, surely worth paying for ^_^
2 bugs that were quite apparent:
- When accidently placing a toxin scrubber out of range of electricity, then placing any others nearby that do have electricity have no effect
- The bee sprites gfx seem to break down into weird yellow pixely globs when its raining
Oh yea, I was also kinda hoping that when after I finished the island I'd be rewarded with a "Congrats, you made it!" screen with some bonus gfx/sfx.
Hey there! Thanks for the feedback
Show post...
NiceWhy the hell do you have "Exit" button on score popup?! It's on the place where "continue" button always lies. I accidentally pressed Exit both times. After Floodplains it exited to Windows and I've lost my progress. Game wrote "mountain unlocked", but mountain is not clickable.
Sorry to sound negative. I Love the game, but this thing is super frustrating. Is there a cheat code or save file to not replay Floodplains again?
Hey, really sorry to hear this :/ if you DM me on twitter I'll tell you some dev cheats to get past that area so you don't have to play it again
:O There are cheats?!
Ofc :P
Hi there! I had the same issue as keks24. I also realllly like your game haha. Could you send me that cheat to so I can skip the Mountain level that I truly finished but then clicked on exit EXIdentally ? ;)
DM me on twitter https://twitter.com/vfqd_
Ha, I did this three times. 4th time's the charm as they always say.