Best Terraforming Games on PC
What are the best terraforming games on PC to play right now? Terraforming, the act of changing a planet’s environment in order to make it more amenable to Earth-based life, is a sci-fi technology that is becoming more realistic. These games explore terraforming on Earth and Mars, showcasing the challenges that come with such an undertaking.
From Surviving Mars’s climate gameplay to The Planet Crafter’s first-person perspective, these are the best terraforming games. If you’re looking for a list of the best PC Games overall, you won’t go wrong with Terraforming Mars, one of the best board games, which blends game mechanics and realism to create a unique experience.
The Best Terraforming Games
Surviving Mars
Despite being one of the best survival games, Surviving Mars’s main story objective – terraforming Mars – is fairly underwhelming. While it’s always a secondary objective, it’s always in the background. What Surviving Mars does really well is the climate gameplay, which is the main focus.
The problem with terraforming a planet is that you can’t simply create an atmosphere and expect everything to flourish. Instead, you have to create the right conditions for each new ecosystem, which can be highly unpredictable. In Surviving Mars, the climate is already established, and you have to balance the atmosphere and temperature to create different biomes.
From deserts to jungles, you have to experiment with different settings and see what works. It’s arguably the most rewarding part of Surviving Mars and makes Mars feel like a living, breathing planet. If you want to experience Mars’s changing atmosphere for yourself, check out our Surviving Mars guide.
Plan B: Terraform
Plan B: Terraform is an early access indie title that requires you to settle and terraform an uninhabited planet. You start by creating a space station, which can be upgraded and expanded, then move on to create farms, build cities, and more. You can read our Plan B: Terraform review for more.
Farlanders
A turn-based game, Farlanders focuses on creating a habitable Mars colony for profit. You’ll have to build farms, power plants, and more to keep your colonists alive. You can read our Farlanders review for more.
The Planet Crafter
This game allows you to terraform Mars from a first-person perspective, which gives it a personal touch that some of the other games don’t have. You can read our Planet Crafter review for more.
Terraformers
Combining resource management and exploration, Terraformers takes a genre that is usually about expansion and turns it on its head by making it personal. You can play Terraformers at Steam Early Access.
Terra Nil
Combining the best of match-three and physics puzzles, Terra Nil transforms a barren wasteland into a thriving ecosystem by changing the planet’s tidal patterns.
Per Aspera
A planetary-scale city-builder, Per Aspera highlights the enormous task that comes with terraforming Mars. While it’s a lot less work than constructing a new planet, building a city on Mars is still a gargantuan project.
Terraforming Mars
Terraforming Mars is one of the best board games, and it blends gameplay mechanics and realism to create a unique experience. While the base game is a relatively straightforward and simple strategy game, Terraforming Mars offers a number of expansion options, adding in new mechanics and increasing the difficulty to create a compelling campaign.
Whether you’re looking to expand your operations to other planets or increase the profit margins on Mars itself, Terraforming Mars offers a range of options for every play style.
