Terraformers Review: Planetary Engineering Has Never Felt This Satisfying

Terraforming Mars might sound like a job for scientists (and an excellent board game), but Terraformers makes it your mission, and on Xbox, it turns out that city-building and planetary survival work surprisingly well with a controller in hand.

Developed by Asteroid Lab, Terraformers blends colony management, resource balancing, and a dose of roguelike randomness into a challenging and cerebral strategy game. While it originally made waves on PC, the Xbox port holds up beautifully. Not only does it translate the complex systems into a clean interface, but it also delivers one of the smoothest controller experiences you’ll find in the strategy genre on console.

At its core, Terraformers is a game about long-term planning. You’re not building theme parks or tuning traffic flow, you’re managing ecosystems, engineering planetary expansion, and keeping increasingly complicated Martian colonies stable, productive, and alive. Each run starts on a blank slate of Mars, where your goal is to expand outward, build cities, generate life-sustaining resources, and adapt to ever-changing challenges. Think of it as Civ meets Slay the Spire, but with more lava tubes and fewer politicians.

What’s most impressive on Xbox is how fluid the controls feel. The UI has been clearly rethought for a controller-first experience, and it pays off. Navigating menus is quick and clean, snapping between city views, exploration zones, and leader abilities without a hitch. Actions like building, upgrading, or assigning tasks are responsive and intuitive. There’s no struggle to move your cursor around a clunky map or dig through nested menus; the layout is optimized to minimize clicks and maximize clarity.

This is especially important in a game as layered as Terraformers. You’re constantly juggling priorities: food, oxygen, energy, science, population happiness, and terraforming milestones like raising the planet’s temperature or generating breathable air. Every action costs a turn, and the map gradually expands as you send out explorers to discover new regions. The controller setup keeps this from feeling overwhelming. Whether you’re micromanaging your city layout or deploying a scout to a distant crater, it all feels fast and fluid.

The game’s visual design also supports console play well. The minimalist UI uses bold icons, clean fonts, and readable tooltips, which helps when you’re sitting back on the couch rather than hunched over a monitor. The game’s Martian palette, rust reds, dusty yellows, and the occasional burst of blue-green forest, keeps things clear without becoming drab. And the soundtrack, a blend of ambient synths and futuristic tones, does a great job of maintaining a meditative, thoughtful atmosphere.

That said, Terraformers isn’t for everyone. It can be slow and unforgiving, especially during your first few attempts. There’s very little handholding, and while it technically has a tutorial, it’s more of a suggestion than a roadmap. You’ll fail runs not because of one bad move, but because your early decisions snowballed into late-game collapse. It’s the kind of game where you learn more by losing than by winning.

There’s also a randomness factor that won’t sit well with every player. Since the game leans into roguelike design, you’re often at the mercy of shuffled leader abilities, randomized building options, and unpredictable exploration outcomes. While this keeps runs fresh and encourages adaptation, it can occasionally feel punishing, especially when a poor string of RNG derails an otherwise well-managed colony.

Still, for strategy fans who enjoy games that reward careful planning and iterative learning, Terraformers offers a ton of depth. The tech tree is wide and varied, offering multiple viable playstyles, whether you want to build a network of micro-cities or focus on massive energy infrastructure. There’s also a meta-progression system with unlockable factions and leader types, which adds further variety to repeat playthroughs.

Performance on Xbox is solid across the board. The game runs smoothly, loads quickly, and doesn’t suffer from the stuttering or input lag that sometimes plagues PC-to-console ports. Whether you’re playing on Series X or Series S, the experience feels tailored to console rather than compromised for it.

Terraformers on Xbox is a thoughtful, ambitious strategy title that manages to translate its deep systems into a surprisingly console-friendly experience. With a clean UI, excellent controller support, and a rich core loop of exploration and growth, it’s a standout among console strategy sims. While the lack of onboarding and occasional RNG frustration may frustrate some players, it’s a rewarding experience for those willing to invest the brainpower.

RATING: 4.0 out of 5.

Terraformers is now available on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One, and Series S/X.

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