Terraformental
favorites
completed
620 ratings
Posted December 13, 2024. Updated October 2, 2025. Played 25489 times for a total of 43808 hours.
description
Try to survive and perhaps eventually even tame an unknown planet in this incremental semi-idle game.
Inspired by Increlution, though if you've played that game, please be aware that the looping mechanic in this doesn't start unless/until you reach a certain point. So you do have to do some planning to make sure you survive long enough first time around.
This project is currently in early access, with a prologue and three chapters of the story available.
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3762790/Terraformental/
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/nMqMxKw6Y5
Ko-Fi Donations: https://ko-fi.com/shadygames
Download (via Itch.io): https://sh4dowsand.itch.io/terraformental
latest update
Steam Update 0.4.5 October 2, 2025
Features
- Added PDA Notes (permanent log)
- Basic music (currently most areas have 1 track, and 1 for travel)
- [Steam] Demo release (full version planned to release on Steam with v0.5 in January)
- [Steam] Cloud saves
Content
- Added minor location near Talos, found by searching new information in the Astrape admin computer
- Altered the "Decrypt Evacuation Data" text log to lead into this
- Added actions to search Laurion data for a medical facility
- Split the power cells out from Repair Aircraft Power, so you can use any combination of full or empty cells
- Added log variants for revisiting artifact locations with different artifacts owned
Balance
- Food/Water Scavenge actions in Laurion are now persistent. Each completion gives +1 max completion on much shorter, non-persistent versions for future loops
- Talos food synthesiser now has 100 durability
- Drain 1/use
- Drain 0.04/second (so long as the coupler is installed)
- Drain increases to 0.08/s after 20 minutes of coupler being installed
- Coupler can now be reinstalled
- Mobile water recyclers
- Are moved independantly of installation
- Can be uninstalled from any location (including the rover)
- Can be unloaded from the rover
- You can now remove/install the quick cycling filter multiple times and at any time
- Reduced the amount of water at Astrape
- Increased base cooldown of the water recycler at Astrape 5s -> 10s
UI
- Added Main Menu, Save/Load menus and independent Options/Stats menus
- [Desktop] Can now manually save with any name
- [Desktop] F5 now quicksaves
- [Browser] Has 3 manual save slots
- Added options for when Wait should/not auto cancel
- Added option-toggleable resource expiry time/order
- Aircraft resources replace Rover resources when you're in the area (and have repaired the power systems)
Bugfixes
- Astrape overload events will definitely be visible now (once you have the PDA and have inspected the warnings)
newest comments
I don't usually comment but I played this a few months ago and ended up dropping it, but whatever changes have been made to the pacing and progression work incredibly well imo and I'm absolutely hooked! With things like persistent actions it really helps each loop feel fresh, and every time I ran out of resources with something barely out of reach I was excited to get back to it faster and unlock something new the next time. The combined actions were also a great touch. Excited for more content, love the sense of discovery :D
Incredible. Could not stop playing and wish it was longer! So pumped to hear about a steam release and looking forward to supporting it. Haven't had this itch scratched since Increlution, which is stated as an inspiration, and was so devasted when that game was abandoned. So kudos to Shadowsand :) While inspired by, Terraformental sets itself well aparent and and differentiaties itself with the persistent actions and while you improve in actions, it's not so explicit level based like Increlution so is very much its own thing.
I've noticed a small bug here and there. Like when you unlock solar panels, even if you don't build the mount, it can still prompt you to install them as part of a combined action. Even though you don't have the mount.
This is probably the best, most feature rich 'incremental' I've played. The only complaint I can think of is how wonky the time scale can be, even if it's for the sake of game balance.
You can survive 100 seconds without water; putting this into terms of real life, that means 50 seconds is one day, with 2 seconds being roughly 1 hour. At first that makes sense, but then you get situations where opening a door you already know the code for still takes 5 seconds (two hours), 5 seconds to get in or out of a rover, 10 seconds to try and open up a garage door remotely only to discover it's out of power, etc. The most egregious example is the time it takes to grab a single water pouch or protein bar. It feels like a lot of stuff should be effectively instantaneous, or use a room feature where it automatically calculates the time to go from one room to the other in order to do a different set of actions (which would also add another element to optimizing your loop).
aaaaannd my save is gone....
developer response: I'm fairly confident at this point that the game itself never "forgets" saves. However, when you play on web, they're stored in the browser, and browsers have all sorts of ways of forgetting things which I can't control. If you ask on the Discord (or DM me on here if you prefer), there is a save bank which is starting to be build up. It's somewhat limited for now, but at the very least it can get you most of the way back to where you were.
top comments
This is REALLY good. Consider me sufficiently interested. First time I've commented on galaxy and I've been playing more or less daily for months. Great little flavor blurbs; a couple of interesting thought sections as a player; intrigue into the artifact and story as a whole; enjoyment in the system of gameplay and although no real interest in possible future combat, I would still do it with a smile while also loving even more of this king of gameplay evolved through new ideas in future chapters. I really hope you continue with this project. Thank you so much.
Cool game, I can't wait to see it get updated.
Looking forward to more! I enjoyed the story telling aspects, and the non-linear loops, I know in Increlution you could just choose to skip some things, but I like that you just don't even have those things to skip.
I did find one bug though, if you explore the rover the second time the "bypass" option still exists and you can take that to "save" time (it's still not quick enough not to die of thirst though
Another weird issue, in Laurion, i installed a water recycler into the rover, which destroyed the rover's ability to make water bottles? WTF?
Wonderful! Only thing would be to have a text size option. On 4k the text is super tiny.