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Terra Nil
Terra Nil is an intricate environmental strategy game about transforming a barren wasteland into a thriving, balanced ecosystem. Bring life back to a lifeless world by purifying soil, cleaning oceans, planting trees, and reintroducing wildlife, then leave without a trace.
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-02 · quoted reviews as of 2026-05-12.
What reviewers agree on
87 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“Pretty relaxing and also a nice strategy game where you have to relax to see the problem. 9/10 no bs, clean and entertaining.”
“Picked this up after a very overwhelming week took me out and I needed a game to help me reset. Relaxing but not brainless, requires just enough attention to detail and some patience: just the right level of challenge.…”
“This is a really beautiful little game, I just wish there was more of it! The puzzles are challenging without being impossible, and the visuals and sound effects are very satisfying. I was pretty disappointed to see…”
18 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“This is a really beautiful little game, I just wish there was more of it! The puzzles are challenging without being impossible, and the visuals and sound effects are very satisfying. I was pretty disappointed to see…”
“'Terra nil' apparently means "nothing on earth" in Latin. Well, time to bring back the 'something'. the good + The idea behind it. No combat, no time limit. Hard to call it 'cozy' as you think of the ecological…”
“Beautiful, nice and relaxing. Runnig well on my MacBook Air M3.”
14 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“Pretty relaxing and also a nice strategy game where you have to relax to see the problem. 9/10 no bs, clean and entertaining.”
“Picked this up after a very overwhelming week took me out and I needed a game to help me reset. Relaxing but not brainless, requires just enough attention to detail and some patience: just the right level of challenge.…”
“If you want a cozy sandbox/world builder or more of a strategic puzzle, the flexible difficulty options have you covered, so there is something here for everyone. Using the 3rd difficulty option I found Terra Nil kept…”
9 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“'Terra nil' apparently means "nothing on earth" in Latin. Well, time to bring back the 'something'. the good + The idea behind it. No combat, no time limit. Hard to call it 'cozy' as you think of the ecological…”
“I love the relaxing challenge of this game. The end result is very satisfying and the music and sound design tie the atmosphere together wonderfully. Would recommend this game to anyone who loves chill puzzle games.”
“The artwork and audio are very appealing, but I find gameplay boring. I feel like there's something missing. Maybe give me the challenge of picking which animals to use for each biome instead of just having them show up…”
5 of the 104 reviews raise this.
“When I first played the demo I loved it. When It came to steam I loved it. When the Arid update dropped, you arn't guna believe this. Loved it.”
“Fell in love with this game. Its graphics and artistic direction are simply gorgeous. I love the gameplay mechanics, the puzzle side as well as the optimization one. Quite relaxing and challenging in the same time,…”
“Man, this game is so cool. It's so *cool*! It works really well as a multi-phase puzzle game, where phases 1 and 2 are primarily about resource and climate management and phase 3 tends to be more of a conceptual victory…”
19 of the 104 reviews raise this · 11 of them still recommend the game.
“Too frustrating for a relaxing game. Remove the photo conditions — this mechanic just doesn’t work.”
“The stupid puzzlework with the animal pictures at the end of each map totally kills this game for me, wish i would have saw this **** before i bought it. Sadly, i bought it in a not-on-steam sale, so refund for me. Such…”
“'Terra nil' apparently means "nothing on earth" in Latin. Well, time to bring back the 'something'. the good + The idea behind it. No combat, no time limit. Hard to call it 'cozy' as you think of the ecological…”
13 of the 104 reviews raise this · 7 of them still recommend the game.
“The game is a solid 7/10. There's not really any depth or strategy to it, although some situations might be more difficult then others, especially when having new information revealed because of mechanics you haven't…”
“The game is fun in casual mode, until you have to reload the same stage several times because progressing through the tacked-on Photo Mode becomes impossible on some of the randomly generated maps. In the normal…”
“Terra Nil is a strange game. It had a fair amount of depth, but is designed to be relaxing. It mostly succeeds at both, but it doesn't fully commit to either. The base difficulty is a bit easy if you want a challenge,…”
12 of the 104 reviews raise this · 5 of them still recommend the game.
“Too frustrating for a relaxing game. Remove the photo conditions — this mechanic just doesn’t work.”
“The game is fun in casual mode, until you have to reload the same stage several times because progressing through the tacked-on Photo Mode becomes impossible on some of the randomly generated maps. In the normal…”
“I bought Terra Nil basically on release years back in when it first came out. I remember getting through a lot of it and thinking it's a very nice, charming and relaxing game, I was satisfied and left the game aside…”
11 of the 104 reviews raise this · 10 of them still recommend the game.
“This is a really beautiful little game, I just wish there was more of it! The puzzles are challenging without being impossible, and the visuals and sound effects are very satisfying. I was pretty disappointed to see…”
“The game is a solid 7/10. There's not really any depth or strategy to it, although some situations might be more difficult then others, especially when having new information revealed because of mechanics you haven't…”
“Can we have more maps???? LOL I've finished all maps (including the Heatwaves new map) on the easiest level. Gotta build up my courage to challenge it's higher difficulties level. I'm so into Terra Nil whenever I need…”
8 of the 104 reviews raise this · 8 of them still recommend the game.
“This is such a satisfying game, I love everything about it except working with excavators. Worth it to see everything come to life, though!”
“Game is overall a good eco-puzzle game with some great art. Having a well designed system looks good after everything is all said and done. However it feels very unpolished in some ways. The camera system is way too…”
“Controls are a little difficult on the steam deck (didn't test with mouse/keyboard) but otherwise I really enjoyed this game.”
Counted across 104 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 87.5% positive rating · as of 2026-05-12
“This is a calming experience. It's intensely satisfying to have your progress lead to life blooming in a polluted land. It's not crunchy, which allows for a chill experience. With fantastic art direction with regards to the environment and rejuvenation progress. P.S. For the…”
— a player, Steam review · 73 hrs played“This game reroutes my neurons like its some kind of super computer being forced to solve for 2+2=4 I wouldn’t say Terra Nil is hard, the game just wants you to plan things out, and sometimes take leaps of faith that everything is going to work out. You gotta do steps A. B. C.…”
— a player, Steam review · 17 hrs played“The game isn't terrible, but it's not great either. If it were longer I'd probably recommend it with caveats, but for the price that game is incredibly short. I have 100%ed the game. I have roughly 12 hours of play time and a good chunk of that was when I left the game idle…”
— a player, Steam review · 13 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live data self-collected from the Steam API · history through 2026-06 via SteamCharts.
Achievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-09-05.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Regional prices at last sample, in local currency — Steam sets each region's price independently.
Cheapest → most expensive, converted to USD at ECB reference rates (2026-09-04). Relative comparison only.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
New bundle with Treeplanter: Plant real trees
Hi everyone! 💖 We're excited to share that we've got a bundle with Treeplanter: Plant real trees which just launched today. 🌲
Heatwave v1.1.12
Hey all! This is a quick patch to fix some issue that were introduced with the controller support update: Fixed an issue where placing a building would result in long pauses Fixed a bug where the Seed
Steam Deck and Controller Support are now available!
Hi everyone! We've been hard at work and we're excited (even if slightly sad) to announce our final update for Terra Nil. We're incredibly proud of the game it's become and the beauty all our players
Heatwave v1.2.10
Hi folks, This small patch fixes a bug that seemed to occur only on some AMD graphics cards. Fix a bug where some tiles would show the wrong ground textures
Heatwave v1.2.9
Hi folks, another quick patch for some issues that have come up. Fix an issue where solar panels could burn infinitely Fix a map generation issue that made continental outskirts unwinnable because of
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-12.
| Genres | Casual, Indie, Strategy |
| Player tags | Nature · Strategy · Relaxing · Puzzle · City Builder · Procedural Generation · Atmospheric · Casual · Turn-Based Strategy · Isometric · Singleplayer · 2.5D (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Full controller support · Steam Cloud · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Italian, Arabic, Polish, Spanish - Latin America, Swedish, Thai, Turkish |
| Controller | Full support |
| Achievements | 37 |
| Official site | https://freelives.net/ |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS *: Windows 7 x64 Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 / AMD FX-8350 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 / Radeon RX 560X Storage: 2 GB available space