By Adam Smith on March 27th, 2012 at 1:03 pm.
Turn-based indie puzzler Terraform is about doing a job to the specifications of an employer. Now, if that job involved being an obsessive-compulsive lady dashing around a diner I wouldn’t be particularly excited but the clue is in the title; Terraform is about reconfiguring planets, whether by growing forests and forming oceans or setting off meteorological chain reactions that can alter everything in a single turn. It’s essentially a tile-flipping game but the theme is strong and the eventual complexity of the components, particularly the weather effects. There’s a demo available to download, an older version to play online and the full game is due next month.
It’s a clever game that reminds me of Doodle God and Sim Earth as much as anything. Even though it doesn’t really play like either, the combinations that lead to the discovery of new tile types and the overall theme bring such world-building memories to mind.
I’d heard nothing about it until I visited indieDB this morning and found some details and I then proceeded to spend far too much time with it instead of looking at Max Payne 3 screenshots, which is clearly what everyone who writes about games should be doing all day long.
27/03/2012 at 13:46 Eldray says:
SimEarth 2?
It doesn’t look like that, though, unfortunately.
27/03/2012 at 13:53 LTK says:
The downloadable demo doesn’t do anything for me, but the online one works. Can’t say I’m finding it very entertaining though.
27/03/2012 at 13:56 Untruth says:
To me, it’s one of those puzzlers that has more rules than rewards. I don’t feel like I’m terraforming, I feel like I’m shoving stuff where I am told to to make a pre-defined answer.
It’s a neat idea though.
27/03/2012 at 14:46 Badgercommander says:
Doesn’t work for me either. It’s an interesting idea, hopefully it opens up a bit in the final game.
27/03/2012 at 18:05 PleasingFungus says:
Heh. I was working on a game with a similar theme about a month ago; couldn’t make it fun. Glad to see someone else has persevered where I did not!
28/03/2012 at 03:31 Frank says:
bad indiedb link: drop the “1″ at the end