New Terra

Genre: 2D Flight Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Polyfox)

New Terra, released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a 2D Flight Simulator game where players control a spacecraft tasked with accomplishing goals that generally involve getting to a certain point on a map and returning to your starting point intact.

For a game by a small indie developer, there are some pretty decent 3D visuals here, with some good lighting. These visuals are backed by a mostly subdued synthesized soundtrack that sets a spacey futuristic mood, with occasional techno-style tunes that are faster-paced.

Getting back to the visuals, while the visuals are often technically strong, they are also unpolished, with multiple areas that seem unfinished. There’s another issue, though, and that is the way that this game uses 3D visuals while the gameplay remains in 2D – this means that there are often times where it’s hard to judge when something is scenery and when it is something you can collide with. Furthermore, the foregrounds can get in your way and obstruct your view of the gameplay.

As for that gameplay, I suppose the closest point of reference I can point to is the classic game Lunar Lander, but here players are less concerned with adjusting their thrust to ensure a soft landing than they are managing their fuel supply – your supply is not only finite, but often the margins of error are punishingly small, meaning that even a small misjudgment in fuel use will cause you to fail a mission.

Also unlike Lunar Lander, you can orient your ship in any direction, and you have weapons you can fire at hostile turrets. Combat in this game is infrequent and not especially satisfying, though – every second you waste firing at turrets is a second you’re likely worried about your fuel usage.

There’s another issue here, and that is the map. Players are shown a vague map before each mission that gives an indication where their goal and fuel pickups are in relation to where they start, but once they begin their mission they’re flying solely based on memory and a guess as to how far they might be from anything resembling a landmark. The lack of a mini-map or on-screen indicators of important pickups or goals seems like a huge oversight, and players will likely find themselves repeating missions multiple times out of trial and error.

On that note, there is one other odd frustration this game makes players endure – the menu command button assignments are all odd. You have to press Y to start every mission, for some reason. Even now, I’m unsure if there’s no way to exit back to the main menu mid-mission, or if I simply haven’t figured out the right button to push or something.

The result of all of this is, New Terra feels like an incomplete game that could have used more testing and development. The challenge level seems far too hard even in the easiest game mode, simple gameplay elements like gunfights aren’t all that enjoyable due to the slim margins of error the game pushes on you, and multiple elements in the visuals, gameplay and even the interface feel unpolished. The result is a game that seems like it had some potential to be something akin to a modern take on Lunar Lander, but its problems keep it from being enjoyable.

tl;dr – New Terra is a 2D Flight Simulator game that’s somewhat similar to Lunar Lander, but it suffers from multiple issues, namely in its overly-difficult game design and overall unpolished state. This game has some elements like its visuals that are better than one would anticipate for a game of this scope, but this is ultimately just not a very fun game to play.

Grade: D+

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