TerraGenesis is a free simulation game available for iPhone and Android in which you terraform planets for human habitation, and to my great shock it’s one of the most polished game experiences I’ve ever had in my life. You choose a planet, you’re given a little bit of money and one tiny colony, and from there you build mines, different machines that perform different tasks (e.g. increasing the temperature), research new technology, introduce plants and wildlife, and ultimately build up enough “Culture Points” by hitting population goals to buy your planet’s independence. This is not an intense gaming experience, even by simulation game standards; it’s actually very difficult to put yourself in a completely unwinnable position. This is a game about putting a plan in motion and feeling satisfaction as it comes together – seeing your planet’s atmosphere become more visible as you increase the air pressure, seeing it shift from red to blue as you introduce oxygen, watching clouds develop and sea levels rise.

It’s actually a quite clever example of casual game design, because this isn’t a game you actually sit down and play for an hour or two or eight – it’s something that completely preoccupies you for about five or ten minutes every couple of hours; it runs in the background (and has very little effect on battery use, unlike some of my other mobile games), and you come back to find your plan has paid off (or you botched it completely), and you work out your next goal. And there is actual strategy here – the more powerful your technology, the more side effects it has, so a Heating Cluster gives you +4 temperature, and a Borehole gives you +60 temperature but also +10 pressure, so if your pressure is already at a good level, you’ve got to build something to lower it in response.

On top of that, the game’s learning curve rises at exactly the right pace. The basic principles of the game are very easy to figure out, and the designers allow those principles to increase in complexity on higher difficulties and give you a greater sense of achievement and power in return; on Easy, Biomass is measured the same way temperature or pressure is, but on higher difficulties, you can set it to Biosphere Mode, which lets you create your own lifeforms and your own ecosystem, letting you fully embrace the whole “scientist playing God” deal. That’s part of how the game uses its aesthetic so well – on top of all of this, you also get random events that occur, and sometimes they’re good things (like one of your citizens writing a masterpiece that gives you a bonus income), sometimes they’re bad (like a meteor hitting one of your buildings, more likely on higher difficulties) and sometimes they just are, like getting an influx of Sri Lankan immigrants or an architectural style developing.

Strong recommend.