After about a year in early access, one of Steam's most chilled city-builders is today enjoying its full 1.0 launch. Terrascape might give big Civilization energy with its satisfying hexagons and sprawling landscapes for you to build your own metropolis on. However, this little gem gives you a lot of the satisfying elements of Civ but with a more laid back approach.
Rather than being a full-blown, demanding strategy game, Terrascape takes a soothing step back to deliver a cozy puzzler instead. With some melodic ambient music and gorgeous floating islands as your city-building canvas, the aim of the game in Terrascape is to simply lay out your kingdom in the most complimentary way possible. You score points when you place buildings from your deck in locations with "positive influences", such as appropriate natural resources or other buildings that would benefit from it. For example, placing a lumberjack next to a forest area will award you with more points than if you were to place it somewhere without any trees.
Once you've burned through all the buildings in your deck, you can reinvest your points to acquire new ones. You can also combine certain types of buildings to create complexes, which give you bigger bonuses.
There's even a pleasantly surprising array of game modes to choose from in the puzzle game. The main Kingdom mode lets you simply keep building out your settlements until you either run out of space or run out of points - alternatively, if you want the full stress-free experience, the Creative mode lets you just build what you want to your heart's content. Elsewhere, Puzzle Terras gives you a predetermined deck and tasks you with laying buildings out in the most optimal way possible. And then there are Scenarios, which apply special conditions and give you specific goals to achieve.
On top of this, Terrascape also features multiplayer modes. You can either build a settlement with a friend in co-op, or play against up to four others in a competitive race to reach the target score first.
You can check out Terrascape on Steam right here.
If Terrascape looks like you're kind of thing, we've got plenty of other expert recommendations in our best city-building games guide. Alternatively, you can find more chilled games that you can play with pals in our best co-op games list.
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