Steam Deck Status Unknown!Welcome to my review of TerraScape on the PC. This game is currently in Early Access on Steam. It is brought to us by developers Bitfall Studios and publishers Toplitz Productions (Medieval Dynasty, Starsand).
TerraScape is a city-building game that uses puzzle and strategy elements to get your brain thinking. The game uses decks of cards for the player to build up a city.
Use Your Brain!
Continue reading to find out more. You can also check out our previous reviews when you’re done here.
The Game
So to begin with, TerraScape is a city builder with a bit of a twist. Yes, you build a city. But you build it by choosing from cards that are given to you from decks. I guess you could say when I heard this, my interest was piqued.
Before jumping into the game you’re given the choice of jumping into some challenges or free play. The challenges are as they sound, challenging. You have to complete levels within a certain amount of cards whilst scoring over a certain set score to get bronze, silver, or gold awards for completing the level.
One thing to note is that the game gives players different decks. In my example, these are the forestry, farm, and village decks. Each deck gives you different cards for you to place on your terrain. For example, the forestry deck will give you cards such as the lumberjack, orchard, sawmill, and more. The village deck gives you cards for buildings like the square, houses, the market, and more.
Another cool feature in the game is if you line up the same type of building in a small area, it will merge and make a larger building. This will then score you even more points. Remember that.
The challenges start off rather simple, but the difficulty soon rises to the point it catches you out and you will be retrying a level over and over until you get it just right. However, it’s not an enraging level of difficulty. It just means you need to get your brain in gear to think ahead of your next moves.
Get your Brain in Gear!
The game gives you a fixed selection of cards during a challenge level, and you must use those cards to score over the minimum target to progress. So for example, the game will give you three lumberjacks and one orchard, you must score say 85 points to get the minimum award of bronze. It’s down to you to place the building cards in the best spots on the map in front of you to get the highest score for each.
It’s not as simple as it sounds, because placing one lumberjack in a certain space could jeopardise the remaining lumberjack cards you have. This would then, of course, cause a negative impact on your score. In turn, this could result in you not scoring high enough to hit the minimum target of the aforementioned example of 85 points.
It’s actually quite fun how TerraScape challenges you, even if you pass a level, you’ll find yourself wanting to go back and score higher or get the next higher award.
I also really enjoyed playing in the free-play mode. This is essentially what would be called a sandbox in other games. The free-play mode offers a few starter maps for you when you first jump in.
The point of free-play is literally as it sounds. You’re free to do whatever you want with the cards you’re given. However, soon enough you will fill your map. You may even run out of cards if you don’t score high enough to draw more cards from your decks. So the strategies you’ve learned from challenge mode will definitely help in free-play, you’ve just got a bit more of creative freedom to do as you will.
Look & Sound
The graphics are surprisingly pleasant at all levels. Zoom right in, and you see the buildings up nice and close. This allows you to appreciate the hard work that’s gone into each asset. The textures look beautiful when zoomed out, but again, zoom in and your eyes will be filled with beautifully coloured buildings that look fantastic.
The variety of assets in the game is also top-notch.
The sound effects in the game fit very well and are of high quality. The music in the game is very relaxing and soothes your brain whilst you’re trying to rack it with what your next move may be.
Length & Replayability
TerraScape has numerous challenging levels for you to complete. Not only that, it has a sandbox mode which gives you full freedom of building your own city. That’s as long as you don’t run out of cards of course. That means this game would last you as long as you’d like.
Whilst racking up the hours on the game, you can also unlock 29 achievements in total.
Conclusions
TerraScape mixes it up a bit and I doff my cap to Bitfall Studios for that. I love how you never know what your next set of cards might be, even though you can get an idea from the deck you’ve chosen. There has clearly been a lot of hard work put into the game and it shows from the moment you first launch it.
I personally think the city builder/card game mix works very well.
I score TerraScape a solid 10/10.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
