I have seen many cities construction games, but this is the first time I have seen the "anti-urbanization" game.

The tall buildings are tired of building up again and again, but the branches are not tired of sprouting repeatedly. Terra Nil stands on the back of "How fast, how easy it is to save money". It smashes the empty shells of steel and cement, digs out lifeless wasteland, and hatches meadows, forests, rivers and flowers that stretch everywhere. If environmentalists dream too, then "The Land of the Beginning" will definitely be their most beautiful dream.

FreeLives, the developer of "The Land of the Beginning", is quite famous in the independent gaming industry. This small studio located in Cape Town, South Africa has a long history, but they are all best-selling works with millions of sales. In this regard, they have a secret to winning - market expectations are that the gameplay determines the mind, and they will first build the game framework.

Independent games are the art of playing, and gameplay is the art of interaction. You can dissect a game's system to be well-versed, but it is difficult to show its fun on the perceptual level. This is why 3A games with high cost are more likely to be mature gameplay frameworks, while the inspiration of new things should be pushed to independent games that are "unusual".

"The Place of Beginning" was also born in such a "trial and error".

In 2019, Free Lives game designer Sam Alfred spent a weekend building the framework prototype of "The Land of the Origin" at the old game creative conference (Game Jam) Ludum Dare, and he won the fourth place in the audience.

After a period of polishing, Sam posted the prototype of the game online for free. Immediately afterwards, Sam invited his colleague Jonathan Hau-Yoon, one of the main beauty of Free Lives, to complete the formal development of "The Land of the Origin". The interviewee who contacted us through Devolver this time was Jonathan Hau-Yoon.

Jonathan Hau-Yoon is a typical new artist who has a keen gender perspective and focuses on personal environmental issues. "The Land of the Beginning" is Jonathan's third major project. The popular BroForce in 2015 established the fate of Jonathan and Free Lives. Earlier, he also did art designs for "Fortnite".

Jonathan admitted that "The Land of the First" is not just a "clever gameplay" game, but he agrees more with the spiritual proposition conveyed by "The Land of the First". After repeated crafting and refining, Jonathan pushed the overall atmosphere composed of the game's art and music to a "quiet and far-reaching" Zen expression.

Free version of Demo prototype is available online ItcAfter h.io (an independent release platform focusing on independent games), "The Land of the First" has received a lot of praise among players, and FreeLives plans to turn this game into a commercially-specification independent game.

The English name of "TerraNil" in "The Land of Beginning" comes from Latin: Terra refers to the earth or the entire nature; Nil means blankness and nothingness; Terra Nil means the renewal of nature. On the weekend when Sam was busy with Ludam Dare, his wife gave the game this seemingly remarkable name, but she did not expect it and continued to be used until today 4 years later.

In contrast to most urban construction games that emphasize mining and consumption, "The Land of the First" is an ecological construction game focusing on cultivation and reconstruction.

Players have no specific mission in "The Land of the Beginning", all they need to do is to restore the dead land to life. The game adopts the classic "God Sandbox" system design. Every time the player takes a functional building, the terrain and landform within a certain range of the surrounding area will be changed. The influences of different buildings will be superimposed on each other, thus simulating complex natural ecosystems.

Currently, "The Land of the Origin" demo on Steam shows an ecosystem in the game - the Lowland Valley. The terrain here is flat, the temperature is calm and the humidity is stable, so it is not troublesome to transform. Even so, it is a great challenge to transform a wasteland with limited space into a green space with suitable temperature and abundant moisture.

After it is officially launched, the game will also add three more extreme and fragile ecosystems, including rainforest, coral reefs, and polar circles. Players must face the cruel climate, hydrological and geological conditions and strive to copy the magic of nature in order to truly rebuild these ecosystems.

Compared with urban construction simulation that always pursues the best solutions, the gameplay of "The Land of the First" has an open design concept. While the map is random, this game also gives players considerable operation space. Although Jonathan does not encourage players to regard "The Land of the Origin" as a "God Game", players do have creative creativity and creativity in this game.

The source of creativity is the numerous terrain-transformed buildings in the game, which give players the ability to move mountains and dig rivers in an instant. The creativity of "The Land of the Beginning" comes from the right difficulty design. Players do not need to rack their brains on details, but they cannot waste it unscrupulously.

Freedom and creation are the basis for expression engraved by Jonathan and Sam in the gameplay of "The Land of the First". Jonathan always feels that the more irregular and imperfect things are, the more they can inspire people's creative thinking and encourage us to think about problems from different perspectives.

For example, the scope of the building influence in the game, they can clearly be rules and regulations, but they are made intoNow there is such irregular zigzag shape. In fact, obsessive-compulsive disorder is a mental illness. Not everything in this world must be arranged in a full and neat manner, and staggered manner is also a manifestation of beauty.

This is the special state of mind pursued by "The Place of Beginning", a kind of Zen meaning to let things go. In recent years, this type of game has sprung up like mushrooms after a rain on Steam, which shows the tension of modern people's spiritual world, and even playing games is trying to heal themselves. Just like some people will listen to a specific song at a specific time and in a specific situation, the game is gradually carrying such emotional effects.

The musical sentiment of "The Land of the Beginning" is one of the difficult problems that Jonathan has been chewing on since the game prototype was launched on itch.io.

As a slow-paced puzzle with nature as the background, the sound of wind, rain, lightning, and thunder are the most natural composition and melody of "The Land of the Beginning". However, by the standards of a video game, music is an inevitable emotional supplement. At the beginning, Jonathan was not sure what kind of music should be added to the game to create an overall atmosphere.

They carried forward the style of "action first, let it go" and introduced a large amount of music from the free music library online. Then, in repeated play tests, they gradually eliminated the unsuitable music. As for not considering the fee library at the beginning, it is mainly because the cost is too high - reaching £225 for a single, about $270 per song, and does not include the consumption tax for subsequent releases.

Among the music of a free library, Jonathan constantly refines and eliminates it, and finally locks his ideal musical style on a composer named Meydän. His music—especially piano music—looks very elegant and natural, and largely eliminates the melody and tone from various synthesizers.

On this basis, Jonathan asked Meydän to further improve the environmental details in the music and make differences based on the specific scenes in the game. Now, the music players hear in "The Land of the First" is almost in a unified style, that is, a piano interlude that makes people relaxed.

The music of "The Land of the First" grows slowly from scratch, just like its gameplay and art, and finally intertwines with each other to form a new "ecosystem". The ecosystem of independent games has always been complex, but the only thing that can be confirmed is that the rare free creativity is the origin of independent games. Even if you use laid industrial pipelines, you may not be able to breed something similar to an independent game with a hundred times the resource investment.

Finally, given that the core theme of this work is "Green", I asked Jonathan a question about office greenery. After asking for a brief round of the entire studio, Jonathan gave me a few tips: Kane recommended me the white palm, which is the peaceful lily. This thing likes shade and can grow well under non-natural light sources.; But according to Nanna, white palm seems to be a little toxic to cats.

So I decided to try Petter's proposal - a "yushu" that just happens to be placed on the table.