Terraria

Terraria is a very popular side scrolling indie game created by Re-Logic. Since its May 2011 release, Terraria has received lots of attention, outselling games like Portal 2 and the Witcher 2 on Steam for a few weeks. Terraria is based on a very similar premise to Minecraft. The game world is consists of different blocks, that can be destroyed or placed by the player. The surface of the world is covered by different biomes. Each biome is a region of the map representing different ecologies, ie forests, deserts, plains etc. Each one has its own set of enemies and some unique items that can be found. Below the surface, lies a gigantic subterranean world that has its own biomes that change the deeper the player goes. The underground is riddled with extensive cave networks that are full of monsters and treasure. The player can dig their way down or find natural routes. The material mined can be crafted into different tools and items and it is also possible to place blocks to build big interesting structures. Like Minecraft, this is a sandbox game and has no definitive plot or level structure. The aim is to simply build, explore and have fun slaying monsters!

While this may just sound like a side scrolling version of Minecraft, anyone familiar with Mojangs beast will instantly see the similarities, Terraria is an epic game in its own right. Again like Minecraft, the game is wickedly addictive, eating up large swathes of productive time. Overall I was very impressed with this game, here's why:

The first thing to strike you is the games presentation. Unlike other recent Indie side scrollers like Capsized or Braid, here the developers went with a retro look, using an art style that is reminiscent of the graphics produced by the old 8-Bit consoles. The gameworld is colourful and detailed. The biomes all look distinctive and the underground regions are equally interesting. Characters have a simple but cool anime style. There is a bewildering amount of weapons, armor and clothing the player can equip, all of which look great. Some items, mainly the higher tier stuff, have cool visual effects that really bring them to life. The game is very easy on the eye and is a joy to look at.

The music is excellent. Each different biome has its own theme song, as do the the underground regions. The catchy 8-bit music is well produced and easy on the ear. This is one of the rare games like this where you don't need to turn off the music for the first few months.. It fits in nicely with the graphical look and adds a lot to the experience. Equally, the games sound effects fit in well with the game, no real complaints here, although it would be nice to have more than just one grunting sound when the player is hit by an enemy. Like in Minecraft, getting cornered by a monster and getting hit repeatedly results in the player emitting the sort of grunting that would leave Ron Jeremy feeling deflated and inadequate. But its pretty forgettable in the grand scheme of things.

The game world can be either small, medium or large. However all sizes are huge. The biomes each have a variety of special resources and items that can be only found with them. The surface world is subject to a day night cycle. At night more powerful monsters spawn and attack the player. There are also certain events that occur at random. These can be things like an attack from a goblin army or the rising of a blood moon, which doubles the amount of monsters that spawn and allow them to open doors. These can be fun and add a little variety to the game. They can also be opportunities to collect some interesting special items. Unlike Minecraft, the game has realistic physics when it comes to liquids. It can be fun to drain lakes and pools and channel the liquids in interesting ways.

The gigantic game world. You can see the different layers and biomes

Apart from the usual forests and deserts etc are regions called the corruption. Theses are dark eerie places where powerful monsters lurk. Damaging thorns and weeds grow up from the ground as do poisonous mushrooms. The corruption biome is riddled with deep chasms that are lined with a hard bedrock called Ebonstone, which can only be mined with explosives and high level pickaxes. There are lots of items that can be found here, including special Shadow Orbs which can either drop very powerful weapons, summon bosses or else cause a meteor to land. Meteors are small regions of their own that appear on the landscape. The meteor can be mined and smelted into Meteor Bars which can be used to craft special items and weapons. There are unique monsters that will keep attacking you until all the meteor has been collected. The arrival of a meteor can be random or else caused when a player cracks open a shadow orb.

By far the largest region of the game is underground. This is split into 4 levels. Different monsters are unique to each layer and progressively better treasure and loot can be found the deeper you go. The dirt level exists immediately below the surface and is the thinnest layer in the game. Below this is the rocky dirt layer. This is much bigger and contains large caves and underground pools. The next and largest layer is the rock layer. This makes up the greatest chunk of the gameworld. This can take a long time to get through depending on the methods you are using to explore it. Its full of huge caverns and underground lakes. Lots of different monsters exist down here as well as some small biomes like caverns full of glowing mushrooms. Down at the deeper areas of this layer the player starts to encounter pools of lava.

Underground Jungles are very tricky

The deepest region is the Hell layer. Down here the most powerful monsters exist as do some of the best treasures. The most powerful weapons in the game need to be made from Hellstone, which is very difficult to mine. Frequent attacks by monsters rapidly drain your health and the rocks themselves can sometimes damage you. Hell is full of artificial structures known as Hellhouses. These are full of items and hellforges, required to make the high level weapons and armour.

There is a plethora of different items and weapons. There are several suits of armour, a countless variety of clothing as well as special equipable items that grant the player special abilities. The different weapons are fun, ranging from swords, axes and bows to guns and even laser weaponry. The different materials required to craft the items need to be mined. There is a correlation between the power of a weapon and the availability of the ores required to craft them. Only after the player has broken into the Hell layer can they expect to find the juicy stuff.

Despite not having a defined goal, there is lots to do in Terraria. The gameworld is so vast you would never likely see most of it. There different biomes and layers all have their own challenges and rewards. When the player is not digging or slaying monsters, they can build large palaces and fortresses to their vanity. The game also has several NPC characters that come to your town once you have built a house for them. Certain conditions need to be met before some of them arrive but after a while you have a number of them hanging out at your base. They can sell you interesting items and bestow abilities on the player.

All of these fancy items and armour despite looking cool, does have a purpose however. The game has currently several different bosses that the player can fight. Some can spawn randomly or they can be summoned using special items at 'Demon Altars' which can be found in corrupted areas. The bosses so far in the game are the Eye of Cthulu, a huge disembodied demonic eyeball and The Eater of Worlds, an enormous demonic worm. Another boss, the Skeletron, guards the entrance to each maps dungeon. There is one dungeon per map, they can be enormous and is where some of the best items can be found, so defeating him does become a goal. The bosses drop lots of rare items and loot when they die. Certain NPCs will only appear when you kill some of the bosses, so once you feel powerful enough, its definately worth trying to defeat them.

Curse you Skeletron!

Terraria supports cooperative multiplayer, like Minecraft, where groups of players can join together to play. Players can host or join games created by other people. This allows players to get other people to join them on their own maps to attempt to defeat bosses or explore dangerous locations. Banding together to fight the games bosses is great fun. Sometimes its the only way to defeat the tougher ones. Items can be shared and anything the player carries is brought over from their own map to the map they go to. Equally anything they find can be brought back to their personal maps. This allows for some trading and opportunistic looting whilst in another players map.

There are some small irritations of course. Whilst running around during the day, constantly having to fight the same low level monsters no matter how powerful you are can become a bit tiresome. The night time monsters are tougher and more numerous, but don't pose much of threat once you've got some decent kit, just becoming an irritation after a while.

It can also be a bit tricky to move the players spawn point to new locations. The idea is you need to build a enclosed room, then place a bed in it and set the bed to your spawn point. This will not work unless you have satisfied a specific set of conditions before the bed can be used. Its often unclear as to why it wont work sometimes, even though you have done everything required. The ginormous size of the world can mean long and tedious treks back to where you were killed, so if you can't relocate the spawn point closer, this can get quite annoying. Some areas are very hard so exploring caves can take a while if you get killed repeatedly. Overall though these are minor points.

So Terraria is an interesting, addictive and hugely fun game that belies its simple retro look. It rewards exploration and encourages the player to keep looking for that even better piece of kit. There large number of items, weapons, armour and clothing means you can customise your character nearly endlessly. The great graphics and audio make the game sensually appealing and the sandbox nature of the game gives it a large degree of replayability. Multiplayer also adds a lot to the game. I would thoroughly recommend Terraria to anyone and at less than €10 on Steam there really is no excuse not join the party!