Farlanders

Farlanders is a turn-based city-builder set on Mars, with a retro pixel-art aesthetic and a focus on terraforming as a strategic verb. You lead a colonising mission tasked with making the Red Planet self-sustaining, and the central decisions revolve around which terraforming tile to place where, and how to optimise building adjacency for resource generation.

Each terraforming kit has a preset shape. Drop a water tile into a canyon and the surrounding flat land becomes fertile farmland; drop the same tile onto flat ground and you get ice instead. The puzzle is reading the terrain and using your tiles in the right sequence — sometimes you have to build the geography you need before you can build the city.

Buildings provide bonuses based on placement. A wind turbine near mountains generates more electricity; a farm near water yields more food. Underground expansion opens once surface space runs out, with new areas to dig, alien artifacts to research, and rare minerals to mine.

Procedurally generated maps, terraforming patterns, trade proposals, and weather conditions vary every run. From Crytivo and Andriy Bychkovskyi — small in scope, tight in design, and a more relaxed pace than the typical city-builder.