Preserve looks like a relaxing puzzle blend of Dorfromantik and Terra Nil

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How does your garden grow

Image credit: Bitmap Galaxy

It’s been a good few years for relaxing, puzzle-strategy games about spreading nature’s glory. The future looks bright, too, thanks to Preserve, which seems to blend Dorfromantik’s lush hexes with Terra Nil’s gradual ecological recovery. You’ll find the announcement trailer below.

Preserve | Announcement Trailer

The announcement trailer for Preserve.

“The objective is to foster and sustain a thriving and diverse biomes, where each component coexists in a symbiotic harmony,” says the Preserve Steam page. “By utilizing strategic thinking and a keen eye for balance, players are granted the power to position a wide array of plants and animals, curating an environment that caters to their preferences and aspirations.”

Those plants and animals take the form of a hand full of cards that players can choose from and select where to deploy. There are also different biomes, including carribean reefs, alpine forests and savannas, each with their own set of animals and plants to learn how to use.

If puzzling out the balance of these different elements sounds stressful, Preserve will also have creative mode that lets you plonk down hexes and wildlife with no limitations, and a photo mode for grabbing screenshots of whatever you make.

Preserve is currently aiming to release in autumn this year.

Katharine is our resident Dorkromantik head, giving the elegant village builder a Bestest Best back in 2022, and giving Preserve an all-caps “HELLO” when I messaged her about it on Slack earlier today. Personally, my most recent dalliance with tending to nature in video games was the idle tidy ’em up sandbox Garden Galaxy.