Tune in to participating Terra Nil streams across Twitch from March 27 to April 3, use custom-made tree emotes to plant trees in chat, and we’ll plant trees out in the world on each community's behalf.
In celebration of Terra Nil’s launch on March 28, Devolver Digital and Free Lives have partnered with environmentally conscious Twitch streamers to create a unique streamer forest at Tree Nation and help make the world a bit greener. Plant trees in participating streamers' chats using custom-made emotes and we’ll plant real trees in the world on their behalf as part of the Terra Nil Tree Warriors forest.
The streamer forest is at its budding stage right now and will grow over the course of the campaign as participating Terra Nil streams complete their community tree planting goals. You can also contribute to the forest directly by making a personal donation.
The campaign will run from March 27 to April 3 at the following Twitch channels. All you have to do is join their Terra Nil streams and plant trees in chat by using their custom tree emotes liberally. When they hit their community emote goals, we'll plant €500 worth of trees in real life for them in our Terra Nil Tree Warriors forest. Start watching and plant away!
Free Lives will also be donating 8% of Steam sales profits to Endangered Wildlife Trust, so you can support even more environmental causes by watching any Terra Nil stream and spreading the word. Looking forward to seeing all of you planting a lush, glorious forest both digitally and physically!
Tree Nation is on a mission to plant 1 trillion trees by 2050, and they’re well on their way with over 29 million trees (and counting) currently planted worldwide. In their own words: “Our mission is to reforest the world. Planting trees has been proven to be one of the most efficient solutions to fight climate change.”
Terra Nil is a peaceful, beautiful, and deeply satisfying experience, and you can begin your journey of wasteland reclamation on mobile (via Netflix) and PC on March 28.
Beginning with pre-orders and continuing after launch, Free Lives will be donating a portion of the profits from sales of Terra Nil on Steam to the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
Welcome to Devolver Flashback, a new series of blogs in which we go spelunking in the deep, dank caverns of our back catalogue and pluck out one of the many gems sparkling in the gloom. This week, booze-soaked cyberpunk adventure The Red Strings Club.
Five years ago, Spanish indie geniuses Deconstructeam served me a cocktail I'll never forget. The Red Strings Club is part bartending sim, part existential rumination on the nature of being. One minute you're mixing a drink, the next you're wrestling with challenging ethical conundrums about humanity, privacy, artificial intelligence, and other thought-provoking topics. It's pretty intense, but any cyberpunk story worth its cyber-implants should be.
Sure, there are neon-lit cityscapes and impeccably-dressed hackers in The Red Strings Club. It even has a brilliantly moody, brooding synth soundtrack courtesy of Paula 'Fingerspit' Ruiz. But while some cyberpunk games are content to stop there, Deconstructeam goes deeper, pushing beyond the superficial. The result is a game that isn't just cool as hell, but one that's intellectually nourishing as well. When the credits roll, you're gonna need a lie down.
As Donovan, proprietor of the titular Red Strings Club, you mix cocktails to tap into people's emotions and extract information from them. As Akara-184, an android capable of empathy, you sculpt bio-implants with a pottery wheel-like device to improve people's lives. As hacker Brandeis you mimic voices over the phone to play people against each other.
But as fun as these interactive minigames are (I'll never get tired of hearing the clink of an ice cube when I drop it into a glass), it's not long before The Red Strings Club has you questioning yourself and your actions. Manipulating these people, whether through booze or advanced bio-technology, will challenge the morality of all but the most unfeeling of human husks. Some of these tough moral quandaries may even make you feel uncomfortable.
But that's Deconstructeam for you. This is a developer that wants you to think big thoughts and feel big feelings, and The Red Strings club certainly fulfils that brief. The game's evocative, compelling script was written by Jordi de Paco, with art direction by pixel artist extraordinaire Marina González, whose vivid visual imagination and eye for colour sets this cyberpunk setting apart from other examples of the genre. Some people are just too talented.
The game's mix of bartending, pottery, and social engineering is, let's be real, super weird. When I ask Jordi where the idea came from, he admits that Deconstructeam wouldn't have thought to combine these elements independently. It happened because the studio already had prototypes of each of these minigames, which were then combined, given a cyberpunk makeover, linked with a narrative, and turned into what we now know as The Red Strings Club.
This is a game that was made quickly on a low budget by a tiny team, and was a mish-mash of existing gameplay prototypes, but you'd never know. It's so confidently made and clear in its vision that you'd think the idea appeared fully formed. The Red Strings Club is available now on PC and Switch, and is a must play for anyone who loves point-and-click adventures, branching narratives, or deliciously dark visions of the future. I'll drink to that.
Welcome to the Devolver Digital blog, fresh outta keyboards of Devolver’s biggest blabbermouths!
We have imagined this space as a clothes line where we air all our dirty, dirty Devolver laundry. Whether it’s the latest news on our current and upcoming games, weird insights on our previous titles, or behind-the-schemes discussing the work that goes into creating a Devolver-published masterpiece, we’ll try to give you a wide variety of fine reading material to choose from and discuss with your therapist.
Not to be braggy, but we have been blessed to work with some of the best developers making some of the most original games in the world, so why not take advantage of that, stick around for a bit, and take a peek into the weird and wonderful world of Devolver?