![]() Yes.ĭ PETERSCHMIDT: So Terra Nil is kind of the reverse of that. IRA FLATOW: I wish I were that good at it. And eventually, you have this satisfying machine loop running. Which could lead to building factories or something like that. You kind of have this godlike view of a huge area of land, and maybe we’re growing crops to start a town.ĭ PETERSCHMIDT: Which leads to chopping down trees to build buildings. ![]() IRA FLATOW: Yes, where you build stuff up, right? You start with zero and you build a city or something.ĭ PETERSCHMIDT: Exactly. Have you ever played games like Roller Coaster Tycoon or City– Skylines, or Civilization, anything like that? Producer D Peterschmidt is here with me to play one that I hear falls into the latter camp, hopefully. Some are a little dystopian, you could say. Now, if you follow our video games, you’ll recall we’ve been covering how game developers are responding to climate change in their games. You can play Terra Nil on PC via Steam, or through Netflix Games on iOS and Android.SciFri producer D Peterschmidt speaks with Sam Alfred, the lead designer and programmer of Terra Nil, about how Free Lives designed this “reverse city-builder,” how the studio took inspiration from the flora of their local Cape Town, and how he hopes the game challenges players how they think about traditional gameplay systems and their effect on our world. The player’s ultimate goal is to take all the tech they used to restore the land, recycle it into an airship, and fly away, leaving no human presence behind. You start with a barren wasteland (one that you assume has been completely desolated by human activity, perhaps the aftermath from one of the previously mentioned games), and with the help of advanced eco-tech-like wind turbines, soil purifiers, irrigators, and more-restore it to a thriving, diverse ecosystem. ![]() Instead of maximizing profit at the expense of the local ecosystem, the player’s focus is to make a healthier, natural landscape instead. If you’ve played Rollercoaster Tycoon, Cities: Skylines, the Civilization series-even Animal Crossing-you’re probably familiar with this gameplay pattern: extract some kind of resource from the land, industrialize it into a theme park or a city, and (step three) profit, ad infinitum.īut Terra Nil, a new game from the studio Free Lives, fundamentally challenges this oft-used game loop. ![]()
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