A city and its islands
You start on a boat into the harbour: pick a name and a face, step off onto the quay, and you’re playing. No tutorial. The city was running before you got there — shops, jobs, street lights, a power plant.
Around the city is water: a big island across the drawbridge, and smaller ones you can only reach by boat. The city itself belongs to the townsfolk — building, farming and settling happen out on the islands and in the wilderness. And the land reacts to all of it: forests thin when they’re over-felled, worked ground wears, damage spreads slowly to its neighbours, and nothing resets when you log off.
What you can do
Boats and the harbour
The marina’s hire board has something for every budget — from a jetski to a party boat that fits the whole crew, and a sailboat that never needs fuel. Hire one for the day, or save up and buy your own. Sailing uses the actual wind: how fast you go depends on where it’s blowing from and where you’re pointing.
The city is a working port — berths, a quay, a cargo dock, and a drawbridge on the way north that opens when a boat sounds its horn. Goods move because players move them.
Power, weather, night
The city’s power plant burns timber that somebody has to stock. Homes get power first, then the street lights, then the decorative lights — which are the first to go dark when fuel runs low. If the wood yard runs dry, the whole city goes dark until someone feeds the plant.
Weather is shared: everyone on the server sees the same storm, the same rain, the same lightning at the same moment. And when something catches fire, there are hydrants, extinguishers and a firetruck — whoever is nearby is the fire brigade.
The everyday stuff
Buy a deck at the boardwalk skate shop and ride the skate park — take a timed run and the best scores go up on a chalkboard outside for everyone to see.
Post on the town noticeboard. Set a campfire on a beach and feed it logs. Keep a garden. Drop a friend some cash on the pavement. None of it is a quest — it’s just a town, and you live there.
A world on a server, not a lobby
Terrestrial is built like a small MMO, not a co-op session. Press Play and you get a list of servers — each one a whole named world with its own map, its own history and its own players. Pick one, look over its map, and you arrive in its city by boat.
Worlds run on dedicated servers and keep going while you’re away: crops grow, the plant burns fuel, the townsfolk keep their shifts. Your character belongs to the world it lives in — come back tomorrow and you’re the same person, with the same money, the same chests, the same boat where you moored it.
