In 2014, a Tumblr post juxtaposed some fashion concept sketches with a series of cityscapes – most imagined, though some were carefully selected and framed photographs of places that exist already. The author proposed a near-future science fiction genre, one built on the backs of sustainable energy, ecological consciousness, the return of the handicraft. They coined the term "solarpunk" to describe their theoretical genre, taking inspiration from steampunk. This marked the beginning of solarpunk's spread into popular consciousness, and my introduction to the concept.
Terra Nil released March 28, 2023, developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. In the future, Earth (or at least, an Earth-like planet) has been ecologically devastated; all plant life has died, the air is cold and arid, and the earth is poisoned until nothing can grow on it. You play as an ecological restoration expert at a remove, using automated technology to detoxify and irrigate a region, restore the local flora and climate, and reintroduce local fauna, before finally recycling all of your buildings and disappearing from the landscape via an airship, leaving the area as though it had never suffered humanity's failings.
The 2014 Tumblr post was not actually the beginning of solarpunk. In fact, the exact same term had been proposed in a 2008 Wordpress article by Republic of the Bees. Inspired by contemporary products from SkySails Group (now SkySails Power), a then-manufacturer of large kite sails to provide wind-based assistance for cargo and fishing ships, they imagine a partial return to older technologies in the face of diminishing oil access. 2012 saw the publication of the Brazilian sci-fi anthology Solarpunk – Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável (translated in 2018 as Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World). Unlike other originators of solarpunk, the authors collected in this anthology took inspiration from cyberpunk, not steampunk. They wrote stories about femme fatales disposing of bodies in their eco-friendly waste recycler, biological weapons developed alongside the next GMO crop, and ultra-wealthy cannibal experimentalists fancying themselves carnivorous plants. Many people were independently imagining solarpunk, foreshadowing future conflicts over the genre's nature.
Terra Nil began life as a game jam game for Ludum Dare 45. Building on the theme "start with nothing," the team of vfqd, elyaradine, and thejunt used pixel art and procedural generation to create "a relaxing city-builder about ecosystem restoration." While the art style, building functions, and even aspects of the gameplay loop would eventually see many changes before release, much of Terra Nil's core can still be seen even in this early prototype. Restore, recycle, repeat, and above all, chill.
Today, solarpunk is many things to many people. To some, it is merely an aesthetic like steampunk: greenery, sustainability, and cities described best as either "green Apple" or "quaint." To others, it is a new politic focused on local community, sustainable solutions, and a refusal of the colonial capitalist "exploit over there for immediate comforts over here." To yet more, it is an idealized vision of the future, one whose apparent attainability (if only Big Oil or some other capitalist bogeyman would let it) makes it feel both possible and punk to even believe it could exist (see also: noblebright, hopepunk). This is how you get the solarpunk landscape that presently exists: Goodreads calling the "cyberpunk for the upper-middle class" YA novel The Summer Prince solarpunk, niche short fiction writing groups producing pastoral utopias as they breathlessly explain how their world works, and multiple activist communities rallying around what can and must be done now to mitigate the effects of the ongoing climate apocalypse.
I hoped that Terra Nil would introduce people to the complexities of ecosystem management. I hoped that Terra Nil would help people engage with the intricate network of interactions that produces local and global climates. I wanted Terra Nil to be my preferred version of solarpunk, one that blends sustainable aesthetics, solid scientific & technical knowledge, and anticapitalist activism. Regrettably, Terra Nil is not that.
Bad things first, because I want to end this review on a high note. I'll ignore the over-simplified technologies represented because this is, ultimately, a game and we have to concede that some things are simplified for the sake of entertainment. However, the representation of climate bothers me. Temperature and humidity are individually adjusted and managed, with little regard for the amount of surface water actually present in the region. Climate goals that restore various aspects of the ecosystem (e.g. moss growing on rock faces) can be freely met, then reversed with no concern for their long-term maintenance. Precipitation is used as a golden tool of detoxification, as rainfall automatically purifies soil with no regard for where those toxins will end up (certainly not in the infinite aquifers you pump to fill the various riverbeds you find or artificially channel). For Terra Nil, climate is not a long-term global phenomenon, but a localized and instantaneous set of dials to wiggle.
When it comes to wildlife, the focus is on charismatic species with limited biodiversity. It's unclear whether you're scanning for suitable regions to place animals or scanning for animals that have somehow naturally returned, but you aren't restoring "bald eagles" or "golden eagles," just "eagles" or just "deer." Crabs, fish, and migratory birds are relegated to climate goals, and insects go entirely unmentioned. There's this feeling that wildlife arises spontaneously and can be interchanged across regions of the planet, rather than the realities of ecological devastation caused in places like New Zealand precisely because we thought it would be that easy. Rather than argue for protecting endangered species, Terra Nil suggests we can homogenize ecosystems around the world and thereby simplify their maintenance.
Perhaps the most striking point of confusion comes in the final main stage, where you must inexplicably build a rocket loaded with a seed vault to send into space. While the rocket was part of the initial version of Terra Nil, and certainly is explicable as a "minimum artificial footprint" on the restored landscape, the addition of the seed vault in the final version baffles me. The guidebook you follow throughout the game merely says "build a seed vault, put this book in the rocket, and send it off." There is no explanation for where this rocket is going, nor why they need a seed vault in turn. Are we part of a grand project to terraform the many spent colonies of humanity into replica Earths? The seed vault implies a level of intent that this game does not acknowledge or benefit from. Terra Nil is a game of puzzles, and the seed vault reveals that there is no intentional politic behind them.
Despite this, the puzzles are sincerely very fun and compelling. While I may complain about calling wild boar a staple prey for eagles and other such unusual gamified ecological relationships, I enjoyed the cycle of cleaning, planting, and recycling enough to 100% the game. The soundtrack keeps the puzzle-solving low-stress, and there are many small details to appreciate if you take the time to look closely. I particularly appreciated that controlled burns made an appearance, as a necessary step towards producing healthy forests. The recycling process is also much improved from the original game jam version, even if deconstructing monorail networks can be particularly tedious. There is clearly a love of nature at the heart of this game, the same love that unites the various forms of solarpunk I discussed above. With this in mind, I would generally recommend folks buy and enjoy this game! Just don't use it to explain why so much work needs to go into fixing our planet.
Some final thoughts that I couldn't figure out how to fit into the rest of this discussion. First, there is a sense throughout the game that we are restoring regions to something akin to their "natural state," where humanity was poisonous and nature is (with our assistance) healing. I hope I don't need to go into detail about how this feels close to ecofascism. Second, the demand to recycle all the infrastructure you can feels somewhat like the mantra "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints" applied at a regional scale. It feels like a particularly Western understanding of how humans interact with nature, compared to something more active and relational like what was (and still is) practiced by many Native American communities. Finally, there is a line to draw between the automated & self-sustaining technologies of Terra Nil and the same sort of "it just works, don't think about it" qualities pervading the image of "fully automated luxury gay space communism." While the player is ostensibly reading the guidebook focusing the game's progression, there remains a vibe that we are in some sense part of an automated process, at most directing automated systems to execute a restoration whose biomass ultimately feeds further restoration. Again, we can somewhat ignore this because of gamification, but there's a resonance between this necessary ignorance and the ignorance necessary for FALGSC to seem viable or sustainable.
In summary, Terra Nil follows the utopian pastoral feel-good branch of solarpunk in creating its reverse city-builder above all others. While this disappoints those like me who are looking for a more activist, political, and infrastructural solarpunk, it remains an enjoyable game worth the $25 it costs. I may not sit down to play it again solo, but I am adding it to my repertoire of "games to stream when I just wanna hang out and chat while entertaining," alongside DemonCrawl.
