Terra Nova – The Mystery of Zephyr’s Landing by P.Rail
Playtime: 49 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
-
this is a fun, slightly pulpy, scary sci-fi adventure story with classic vibes. It’s got a lot of story elements that really pop off—scary monsters, nefarious cyborgs, and you can dump lava on things.
-
The main “engine” drawing you in is the combo of revealing lore while also exploring a dangerous new place . . . it’s a classic for a reason, I was intrigued
-
I enjoyed the art, which really added to the menacing atmosphere (minor quibble, I would have preferred if the PC either never appeared in the art, or appeared near the beginning—since he appeared only near the end I had long since developed a contradictory mental image). The sound design was also great in feeding the atmosphere
-
The puzzle aspect was also satisfying. It wasn’t tuned at an extreme level of difficulty, but there’s a real hunter-gatherer satisfaction in seeing an item in one place on the map and realizing where else you have to use it, and that was definitely present here
-
Very glad to see the game ships with both contextually available hints and a walkthrough, which I love in any game with puzzle elements. (I used the hints once, about the restricted area).
-
Also, I read the walkthrough after completing the game and would recommend looking at it—it contains some interesting notes from the author in addition to typical walkthrough content. (“Egyptian curse” is an interesting lens to view the story through, I hadn’t thought of it while playing but I do see it in hindsight, there was that feeling of awakening a power better left to slumber).
-
OK, I carried this hunk of obsidian around for most of the game and failed to find anything to do with it. If I had a transcript (which I don’t think works in the web version) it would show me futilely attempting to hit a lot of things with a rock. If anyone figured out a use for the obsidian, let me know, I’m curious! (I only had 570 out of 600 points, which perhaps is related.)
Notable line:
My one fervent wish:
So, I enjoyed the format of discovering a bunch of revelatory lore. And there’s also a lot going on with LAYERS of lore where the player character thinks A, but actually B. Unfortunately these twists didn’t fully land for me since I, the player, didn’t think A in the first place, so A and B were both the same amount of surprising to me.
So for example, pretty early on I ran into “Kael the Liberator” and hear “Your amazement turns to horror as you come to realize the truth. Kael the Liberator hadn’t died a martyr in the rebellion after all. He had suffered a far worse fate.” Dark. But also–this is the first time I heard the name “Kael the Liberator” or knew we had a rebellion, so I’m too busy chewing that to be surprised that he’s still around.
Or, for example, when looking at the assembly line: “Each station along the line reveals a step in the forced conversion of settlers into cyborgs.” The fact that settlers were forcibly being turned into cyborgs is huge news to me (the player), yet as written I guess the player character knew that already?
Verbatim from my notes during play I have “am I a cyborg? Is that normal?” It’s not exactly bad, but being at that level I was equally surprised by a lot of things I learned.
This might be complicated because the player can get the lore in a lot of different orders in the game, but one thing that might help is delivering key background facts before the twists (e.g., this is not elegant, but if the player character had been musing on the way in about admiration for heroic martyr Kael the Liberator, I would have been a lot more surprised to run into the guy).
Overall, a fun, atmospheric sci-fi puzzler delivering lore and atomsphere in a interesting adventure package
Gameplay tips / typos
- I think the lava is slightly bugged—once in my playthroughs it suddenly vanished from the crucible (saying it was empty) and I had to go back and get more.