I picked up Tiny Terraces during the Steam Summer Sale for around €3.34, and honestly, I’ve been more than happy with my purchase.
I originally went into this expecting something I could have running in the background as a little idle game while doing other things. And for the most part, it absolutely works for that. The funny part is that, every now and then, it somehow stopped being an idle game and turned into “okay, I’m just going to spend another two hours making this one little corner of my terrace look nice.” Hahaha.
There’s something really charming about the whole game. The little guys, the art style, the atmosphere, and watching your terrace slowly turn into something that actually feels like your space all work really well together. My biggest recommendation would honestly be: Take it slow. Enjoy the characters, enjoy the art, and make something pretty.
Which brings me to the one thing I think the game accidentally made me do wrong.
I saw all the goalposts for unlocking new items, and immediately my brain went into completionist mode. I wanted to unlock EVERYTHING before I properly committed to designing my terrace. That ended up making the game feel a little more rushed than I think it needed to be. The achievement grind is probably my biggest complaint. There’s an achievement for harvesting 1 million plants, and, well... That's a lot of plants! Especially if, like me, you’ve spent most of the late game focusing on making a beautiful terrace rather than building the most efficient plant-harvesting machine known to mankind.
You can apparently get much more efficient by fencing in the little fellas and setting things up specifically for faster harvesting, but I didn't really want to do that. I wanted my terrace to look nice. So eventually I found myself staring at that 1,000,000 plant number thinking, “Oh. This is going to take a while...”
There are also a few things I’d love to see changed or added.
For one, I think it would be nice if either cosmetics or seeds were unlocked through currency, rather than both being tied to objectives. Having one progression system based around objectives and another based around currency could make the pacing feel a lot better. As it stands, I found myself constantly thinking about what I needed to unlock next instead of just designing my terrace.
I also wish there was a way to see everything that could eventually be unlocked. Not knowing what equipment and cosmetics were coming later made it difficult to commit to a particular layout, because I was always wondering whether I was about to unlock something that would completely change how I wanted the terrace to look.
And then there are some quality-of-life improvements that I would love to see.
Being able to place multiple tiles, decorations, or structures at once would be fantastic. Even better would be some kind of copy/paste system for layouts, or the ability to pick up and move an existing section of your terrace as a whole. Because let me tell you: discovering that your grid is slightly off after you've already built half your dream terrace is a special kind of pain. Having to completely destroy and rebuild everything just to move something over by one tile hurt a little more than it probably should have.
These are all fairly minor complaints, though, especially considering what I paid for the game.
TL;DR: Great little game that I’d absolutely recommend. Take things slow, enjoy the little guys and the art style, and don't let the unlocks trick you into rushing through the game. There are some areas where the progression and building system could use a bit of polish, but for €3.34, I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth.
And honestly, there’s something strangely satisfying about leaving Tiny Terraces running in the background, coming back later, and realizing your little terrace has quietly become a place you actually care about. 8/10
- mDriveUnit
