Anyone with a Netflix account can play one of the most visionary games of the year – for free

I have written before about how good – and inexplicably quiet – Netflix is with its gaming offers. The streaming giant has been moving into the gaming space at quite a pace lately, making killer adaptations and spin-offs for The Witcher, Cyberpunk, League of Legends, Castlevania, Tekken, and many more besides. But it seems that most people (well, 1% of the company’s 200 million users) aren’t aware of the incredible games that you have access to for no extra cost as part of your subscription. And, yesterday, one of 2023’s most interesting titles was added to that roster.

This week, Netflix (alongside publisher Devolver and developer Free Lives) has released the impressive, interesting, reverse city builder Terra Nil on both iOS and Android platforms. The game is available on PC, too – and that’s where I’ve been playing it for the past two or so weeks – but the mobile version of the title is by no means a cheap trade-off; it works just as well as its PC sibling.

Your aim in Terra Nil is simple: you are reviving a planet that has been ruined and reaped of all its resources, left to fester and rot in its own putrid filth. To that end, you need to detoxify the soil, increase biodiversity by reintroducing plants, rainforests, and marine vegetation, and finally pack up and leave without a trace. It’s the first proper solarpunk gaming title I’ve seen out in the wild that’s worth giving a damn about, and it does what it does perfectly.

Positive, eco-first messaging aside, I think Terra Nil’s biggest achievement comes from the smart and playful way it teases you into its puzzles. There is only ever a finite amount of resources for you to play with, so deciding how efficiently you’re going to scrub the land of toxins before getting started on, say, regrowing an algae forest, is always a head-scratching conundrum.

The way the game rewards you for engaging with (and overcoming) its challenges is pleasing, too: if you correct the atmosphere to such a degree that rainclouds start to form in the peaks of your hilly areas, you may notice fresh rainwater does half your job for you – bringing more green to your dead earth, washing away waste, reviving your chosen locale in such a satisfying sweep that you can’t really believe what you’re seeing.

Terra Nil is a very good game. It’s an interesting take on a cliched genre that relies so much on taking from the earth. So, in giving you a game that revolves around you giving something back, Free Lives have injected some progressive and visionary life into the genre. It helps that the puzzling and the level setup is engaging and fun, and will happily work in little 10 or 20 minute bursts on your phone, too.

This is the sort of game that will suit you if you want to float away in a pleasing, satisfying daze on your commute in the morning, or beaver away at a mess of old man-made structures and knotty environmental puzzles in bed at night. I can’t recommend this experience more, and given that it’s on Netflix games, you’ve literally got nothing to lose in trying it out.

You can check out the full list of games available on Netflix here. To find Terra Nil via Netflix, hit the ‘Games’ tab on your mobile app home screen and follow the instructions from there.