REVIEW: Terraria

“Terraria” is an unadulterated adventure built on interpretation.There is no story. There is no ending. There is no completion. It is game that takes away nothing and gives everything. Smart yet simple. Random yet vast. Story-less yet full of life. I came into “Terraria” not knowing a thing; friends had told me it was like Minecraft. That didn’t tell me much– I’d never played Minecraft (or any other mining game for that matter). From the moment the game loaded upon my Xbox One (Sold Separately!), and the word “Terraria” flashed upon my large 4K TV in brightly colored, HEAVILY pixilated format… I gulped. A big gulp. But what lied ahead what something more. Something special.

When I first started– not knowing a thing about sandbox mining games, It was obvious I had to head into tutorial. I would highly recommend tutorial for any new-comers. It’s fast, very informative, and you get two achievements upon completion! Woo-hoo

It was time to begin my adventure.

Now, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for customizable character creation. I spent an hour on my “Destiny” character alone (what a waste of time that turned out to be). This process has several character options to make the perfect pixilized persona of almost anyone you can think of (I made mine look like Goku with gold spikey hair!). Following that comes a prompt asking for a world size (small in my case– don’t like to get too overwhelmed at first). Then my character pops into the randomly generated world, and that’s it.

No two worlds are every alike in “Terraria”. Everything randomly generates: caves, walls, trees, lakes, monsters, NPCs, etc.

What little information the tutorial gives is centered around building a house to protect friends and NPCs from the terrors of the night. To build a house, a few items are needed. And that’s where the quest lies. Brought to life in a 2D landscape, it is your job to venture off left and/or right collecting items to build said house. Chopping down towering trees grants wood for walls and a door. Slime monster Gel produces fire for light. And stone below the surface helps create a foundation and frame for the house.

With many different settings including bright forests, golden deserts, spewing red lava caverns, there’s no saying where my journey would take me to mine whatever I needed.

Mining usually takes a few swings with a pickax and grants a few blocks of stone, or sometimes copper, tin, etc. It takes several swings to collect wood from trees. Ultimately, mining is the most time consuming, yet self indulgent experience in “Terraria”– and it will be what most players spend their time doing and concentrated on. Because without mining there is no way to build a home. And without a home on the first night– well, It won’t be pretty.

Night time rears its ugly head. Monsters swarm from every corner, including Zombies, gel monsters, and others– with little more than a small sword to fend them off. On the first night it’s most likely better weapons won’t be gained. Starting characters have five hearts of life– the monsters have a long green health bar (Fair? Of course not. It felt like Link vs. Scorpion from Mortal Kombat). I managed to fight off the first couple monsters with some luck. But they keep coming. With no shelter at night, death will become you– over and over again– until morning comes. Even after tutorial, night came so quickly I lost focus on building and was too excited to find out what was further and further away. I didn’t take gathering material serious enough and didn’t have much to build with. I found the next best bet: hiding in a cave, then covering its opening. I’m not sure how long day lasts in actual time (because it’s all fun and games). Though night and all its horrors seemed to last a lifetime.

Daytime approached. Monster go went into hiding. But there is always the usual ghoul or two every so often; prepared to attack the player, NPC or at least rip a wondering little bunny rabbit to shreds– ultimately decapitating it and spreading its guts flying. Also oddly satisfying.

Lessons learned, I began to mine, viciously. Gathering as much stone, ore, and wood as possible.

Where do these items collected go, exactly? Great question! A large inventory screen appears with the click of the (Y) button. Large, yes, but very simple to understand. Mine a stone? Goes into a slot, next to many other slots that are available for hundreds of items. Want to use an item that was recently picked up? Sure! Just click on the desired item with (A) and move the cursor to a smaller row of immediately usable items at the top of the screen.

At first, in the immediately usable items that can be drawn while the character is in play are:

– Pickax for mining
– Ax for chopping trees
– Mini-sword for fighting (though I had more success fighting off enemies with the tree ax until I gathered more material to build a better sword)

Terrified that night would fall soon, I set the adventuring aside. It was time to build a home/shelter for protection. A shelter is only required to be 10 x 6 stone cubes to be considered livable for NPC characters to take residence– along with a workbench or table, chair and torch. Not all of which can be built until a workbench is utilized in the process. Creation of a bench makes building new items optimal and it’s the only way to expand upon the small amount of available buildable items. Once shelter is built, the villager will come. It will take residence. At night you protect it if the shelter gets attacked.

Want another villager to reside within? I created a two-step guide to help:

– Mine more
– Build more shelters.

More villagers will come to live in built shelters. Repeat. Until it gets bigger, better and much more.

That’s that. That’s “Terraria” in a nutshell. But ultimately, when you dig a little deeper (pun intended) there’s so much more to be discovered.

“Terraria” can be vast if you choose it to be. Not only does the adventuring take place on both left and right sides of the 2D world but also down. Very far down. What lies below? Well, let’s leave that for those adventurers ready to explore for their first time.

Building a town is the main point of this game (if you’d like to give this game an agenda). Mining, gathering, building, and creating a town for the many NPCs that will be visiting and moving in is just exhilirating and fun. There is no limit on what type of house it can be, or even if you want it to be a house. Building is based on imagination. Massive mansions- check. Medieval castles- check. Almost anything that can be imagined can be created.

It doesn’t end there. Along the endless adventuing, mining, and fighting are many Boss battles along the way. Online allows friends to visit your village and adventure along the way.

Having no true beginning, no “fight to freedom” end, does “Terraria” have any short comings in this? Yes and no. It’s hard for a game to be judged by what it doesn’t have when I can magically make that “nothing” something. However, this game with so much indulgence isn’t perfect. As I stated earlier, my first night was hell. But I learned to cope. With lack of direction and nothing to really help guide me along I felt lost in some aspects. Yes, an NPC can be clicked on for “helpfull hints” though most of which don’t lead to advancing quickly.

Creating and building is quite slow at first, it’s not something that should be rushed. It should be enjoyed, explored upon before pumping out cold, heartless mansions. But I still wanted them quickly nonetheless.

This game was originally built for PC. With that in mind the controls for clicking away, chopping down and picking stone and ore feel primitive. It’s not great. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating when you place something in the wrong spot or pickax something in your house you didn’t mean to. But for what lies beyond, and beyond the beyond, it is easily forgivable.

There is so much to do in what, at first glance, appears so small. I don’t even believe I cracked the surface (pun #2 intended) being a week and several hours in.

With everything in a beautifully colored, pixilated world, “Terraria” is more than the sum of its parts. It shouldn’t be judged by what it gives but by what you can give yourself through imagination. For a game based on interpretation (and a rough first night!!), I found myself not able to stay away– and never really finding the words to explain why I can’t stop going back for more. “Terraria” is far and above something special.