pascal

A perfect balance, please.

Terra Nil is a relaxing and upbeat strategy game. What if it was possible to repair a devastated planet? You know, bringing back greenery, biodiversity and animal life? Even if Earth takes a bit more work, you can at least fix this little version of the planet. Although it takes a lot of patience, the end result is very beautiful. This world (Earth??) is completely stuck, and it’s up to you to fix it. For this, the environment must be restored. You use green energy to set up irrigation, toxin purifiers and new rivers. Each new region brings its own set of challenges. We appreciate the delicate balance between the relaxing graphics and the complex mechanisms. It’s great to bring nature back to life, but you have to be resolutely surgical if you want to succeed. One misstep can make your project forever incomplete. Of course, you can start from scratch (or from a series of checkpoints) if necessary. The stakes are pretty low, but in a way, aren’t they? Starting over involves a considerable investment of time, which I found rather daunting. In particular, we felt genuine angst when faced with a soft reset. We knew we had to do something different, but we weren’t always sure what it was. This feeling of unease is nicely offset by the triumph of success. You also get the chance to enjoy your work before moving on, which is great.

The aesthetic of Terra Nil is seductive. The sight of fresh grass growing on desolate terrain is always satisfying. Seeing swamps, tundra and forests grow in an instant is always enjoyable. This is where the sound design comes in. We found ourselves keeping our headphones on at all times. You just don’t want to miss anything. The murmur of flowing water, the creak of growing trees, and even the crackle of flames are all excellent. Not to mention the music, which gives you a great picture while you work. Another element of satisfaction is the recycling phase. It’s a must to complete each area, but it’s still great. You installed all these stand-alone systems to revitalize the land, which is already very beautiful. But then you can tear it all off, piece by piece. What remains is a perfect landscape, untouched by any artificial creation. Your ultimate victory is to erase all traces of your passage. I really enjoyed playing this passage, even if it can almost become tedious. You can’t leave a single coin behind, following all.

Pack your bags.

Each step becomes more complex. One of the new elements that Terra Nil puts in your path is the search for new forms of animal life. You need to find the perfect environment in which each of them can thrive. This is the part of the game that I liked the least. We had to scan more than a dozen times to find some species, with guesses that seemed really random. Worse still, sometimes the environment you have created is not suitable for certain animals. It only takes three to progress, but you can always get stuck in the progress. If you don’t have the correct layout for at least three species, it’s time to reset. As you progress, the next steps will require increasingly granular design to complete. The last region took several resets before we got there. It is a delicate balance, both relaxing and intense. We liked to make everything green and perfect, but you really have to do it twice before you get there. However, the end result is worth it. Who wouldn’t want to turn a bloody hell into a thriving paradise? Even better, developer Free Lives is investing a portion of pre-order and post-launch sales into the Endangered Wildlife Trust. In this sense, playing this game is good for the environment.

VERDICT

There is something gratifying regarding Terra Nil. You are working to restore a dead world, with tangible results that will keep you busy. The mechanics get pretty complex following a while, don’t they? And sometimes you feel like your mistakes are indelible, even if you start over. But the work seems worth it. If you’re looking for a peaceful but sometimes stressful gaming experience, consider Terra Nil. As a result, you might even reconsider our current planet.

Do you miss the iconic keyboard of BlackBerry smartphones? Well, a gadget is on the way that might fill your void. More precisely, it is a portable USB keyboard identical to that of the BlackBerry Classic (also called Q20). The project, created by the Swedish guys from Solder Party, was made possible by the fact that the team managed to get their hands on a significant amount of telephone keypads. Next, they squeezed all the necessary components into a transparent plastic case and a compact Raspberry Pi RP2040 board, which can detect key presses. In addition, the gadget, in addition to being characterized by the logo of the Canadian company, is equipped with a USB-C port and supports USB-HID, which therefore makes it possible to connect the small keyboard to a PC Mac, Windows or Linux, or even Apple and Android mobile devices. Among other things, there is also the physical key / trackpad which allows the gadget – called BB Q20 – to also be used as a traditional mouse. Finally, the price of the keyboard is not even excessive: in fact, we are talking regarding around 30 dollars. Therefore, for BlackBerry nostalgics and, why not, for the curious, it can be a rather interesting purchase. In addition, the kit is open-source: in short, it will be possible to “direct” the gadget towards various projects.

No points, just skateboarding.

There was a time, for those born in the 90s, when Tony Hawk was an idol to many and riding a skateboard was something definitive for those who wanted to stand out from the crowd. Like skateboards, BMX and many other mediums, seeing people on these boards was like seeing free people, able to fly from step to step. For those born in this era, therefore, it is also normal to have played games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and so on, where you might, by pressing a few buttons, hover in the air performing the strangest tricks. All the games released so far, however, lacked realism, being very arcade: this is where Session: Skate Sim comes in, a game that aims to depict the world of skateboarding in a realistic way. This is why there is no score in the game, but rather figures which will initially be very difficult to achieve. The analog sticks represent your avatar’s two feet, so moving them one way or the other will give you a different result. We also asked a member of the development team to explain the game to us, so we will try to tell you regarding the experience in the same way.

Once you’ve placed your feet on the board (which you can step on or off with the press of a button), your right foot will be at the back, your left at the front (at least normally). To make the board jump, you will therefore have to load your foot by pressing on it (hence the right analog down), then lift your left foot (hence the left analog up), thus achieving an Ollie . Starting from there, to then do a Kickflip (Ollie + rotation of the board), you will have to do the same procedure, but pushing the left analog no longer upwards, but to the right. So, to do a grind, you will have to press your feet with the analogs in a certain way, and to do the most difficult tricks, you will have to go almost as crazy as in reality. The basic idea has always been to offer a game that would be a skate simulator, capable of giving space to those who like this activity (or to those who would like a more realistic game). The approach to checkpoints is also interesting: they can be placed anywhere on the map and have the advantage of giving this sense of repetitiveness and trial and error to skateboarding. In fact, skateboarding is not regarding doing random tricks to accumulate points, but rather doing the same trick over and over once more, which will fail each time, until you succeed.

Three cities and a free zone.

Of course, speaking of realism, don’t expect to have half pipes and ramps everywhere: the cities offered in the game are New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. All three are full of spots where skaters use their boards, and some areas have even been restored to how they were in the 90s, when they had a lot more room to ride and therefore allowed for a lot more tricks. Finally, the game features a kind of campaign that will allow you to learn the basics, piece by piece, so that you can make your way through the different towns and move around as you please. The avatars that you can select will not be numerous, but where the aesthetic customization – really bland – ends, the customization of the clothing items of the skaters begins, detailed also thanks to the presence of famous brands. Finally, the set is completed by a photo mode, or rather a video mode, which allows you to record your exploits with various effects. If in reality, a skateboarder almost always has a friend ready to film (more falls than successes), here you can actually see a replay of your actions and put effects, change the frame, in short, do whatever you want . Since there are few interactions and the worlds are not alive, continuing to play to master everything is not easy either. No pedestrians or cars on the streets, everything is lifeless and makes you think of a completely locked city. It’s a shame, because the areas where you can skate are varied and the environment offers many opportunities to pull off some cool tricks.

The game in technical terms unfortunately shows its side on several occasions, but it is also true that the aim of Session: Skate Sim is not to give an aesthetic simulator, but a practical one: certainly fixing the simplest bugs would have been great, but we are sure that the team will work on it. Even the drop system, very Ragdoll, is sometimes plastic (but fun to watch). Finally, the city is very stripped down in terms of population, as everything looks like a big empty skate track, but maybe this detail stems from the wishes of the developers. Footnote, work continues: The game has experimental features that show that the Crea-ture Studios team is still working on the game, possibly implementing additional features that may come in the future, but for now you will have to try them in “beta” mode. If you enable the city pedestrian option, the game will run even worse than it already did, with an even lower framerate and choppy frames. Indeed, Session: Skate Sim is really not up to scratch technically on the Nintendo Switch. First of all, the graphics are of a very questionable standard, reviving old Playstation 2 moments visually. Effects like shadows appear suddenly, car mirrors pop up when you approach them, etc. Also, the level of detail in the worlds is extremely low and everything looks dull. The refresh rate is also very disappointing, which means that the feeling of speed is not super present.

VERDICT

The game is for all intents and purposes a cut above other skateboarding titles: jumping and finishing a trick in this Session: Skate Sim, even if barely, is far more satisfying and fun. The removed points system makes the experience even freer: there are no levels to unlock, just a series of real maps to navigate as you see fit. There are no constraints, and the only thing that will stop you from pulling off the trick you imagine is your ability to learn the controls, which are difficult at first but become almost natural once you get used to them. Too bad for the technical compartment, which unfortunately remains faithful to the years from which the game was inspired. If you’ve ever wanted to juggle those boards, if you had Tony Hawk as your idol for a while, or if you’re curious regarding the difficulty behind the sport, then Session: Skate Sim is the place to be. for you. But the Switch version has dropped considerably more than a little and that’s very disappointing.