In terms of gameplay, Preserve is a tile puzzler at its best. There’s three different gameplay modes in early access: the main harmony mode, the puzzle mode, and the sandbox mode.

In the harmony mode, you begin with a small section of land which you need to bring back to life. To do so, you’re given rain tile cards which can water either one tile, or a group of tiles. Each tile you place gives you points which will grant you more tiles once you hit a certain amount. As you progress you’ll unlock different habitat tiles, which, if you place three or more together, will create habitats which are the perfect places to home animals. Now before you go crazy, each habitat tile has requirements to be placed, and you’ll need to make sure the tiles are green if needed, from being watered by rain, rivers, or lakes, or a certain altitude, like higher up for mountain habitats.

Animal tiles are unlocked as you progress, and each animal has specific habitats they can live in. Your habitats can home different amounts of animals depending on how big they are: 3 tiles will home one animal, six will home two and twelve will home three. Get three of the same animal in the same habitat to gain bonus points, and have three different animals in the same habitat to gain an even bigger bonus.

Tile cards aren’t the only thing you unlock as you build up your points, you’ll also unlock new land sections too, so you can expand the map. Run out of room before you hit the next point benchmark, and it’s game over.

There’s three different biomes you can play in throughout each of the game modes, Alpine, Savanna, and Caribbean Reef, and each come with different plants, animals and challenges to overcome. I particularly loved played the Reef mode, finding the variation between the underwater and sand habitats so cool and fun to play.

Puzzle mode will see you be given limited land space, and limited tile cards to gain a certain number of points. This mode is great for learning the ins and outs of the game, so if you’re finding it tricky on harmony mode, jump into the puzzle mode to really learn more about each of the tile cards.

Last but not least, the creative sandbox mode lets you build up your own unique and beautiful landscapes, without worrying about points or cards, and is a great relaxing experience.

For early access, Preserve feels really polished and has a ton of content in the game already. The harmony mode is replayable and essentially endless, giving the game some real longevity. For gameplay it definitely hits the cozy puzzle mark, and doesn’t really feel like an early access game. I’ll be interested to see what more is to come.