Project Tomorrow: terraforming Earth mostly means attracting everything that wants it dead

Ten thousand years ago, an invasion contaminated Earth. You come out of hibernation, and your job is to make it liveable again. In that order: gather resources, build a base, set up terraforming machines, then defend them.

Because that is the whole idea. Every patch you turn green draws the attention of the alien forces, and the more the planet comes back to life, the harder the waves that come to wreck your base and your machines. Progress is what causes the danger.

This mix of base building, tower defense and survival works better than I feared. You grow crops, build water purification, scour the map for seeds and food caches, and meanwhile shore up defenses before the next wave. You juggle economy and walls constantly, and the game knows when to speed up.

The simplest pleasure is visual: watching a grey, frozen stretch turn into a green island, tile after tile, is a reward survival games often forget to give.

Early Access shows in the depth. Building options and enemy types come round quite fast, and once you find a solid defense, runs start to look alike. The solo developer, Advance Nine, is open about relying on feedback: more than 15,000 people played the demo, and their comments have already changed the game, by the developer's own account.

At 5.77 euros, value for money is hardly a question. For the price of a sandwich, it is a very good evening of strategic survival, with reasons to come back.

If your base held more waves than mine, prove it on the InsertCoins Discord.