Terraria

Terraria is an indie game made by Re-Logic for download via PC (not Mac as of yet) for a mere 10 smackroos. In a gaming world overrun by triple 'A' tittles where everyone is trying to put their sights on the next videogame graphical apex it is nice to see a 'retro-style' game like this come out from an independent game developer and see it do great from a sales aspect. This 2d downscroller delivers great character customization, environment manipulation, and gameplay with a misleadingly simplistic aesthetic. So, sit back and read all about Terraria.

The simple score breakdown of "Terraria" is like so…

Graphics/Character Animation – 5/10

Fun Factor – 8.5/10

Story – 5/10

Controls- 9/10

User Interfacing – 7/10

Learning Curve – Do yourself a favor and watch some tutorial videos (here) http://terraria.wikia.com/wiki/Starter_guide

Sound – 8/10

Value - 10/10

Total – 7.5 / 10

Jump down to my "All in all" if you only want a brief summary. I have also put key-words in CAPS to indicate what the bulk of that specific paragraph is discussing to make the review easy to navigate to points of interest.

You first crank on the game and it starts rolling. You CREATE and name your CHARACTER and WORLD. The character creation is basically just roughly 16 different hair styles and you can change the hue on your skin, hair, and underclothes. When creating a world the game asks you to choose a world size between small, medium, and large. These different sizes go hand-in-hand with how much distance must be traveled either down or left and right to reach new themed zones. Small is fine for any single player and large is quite enormous and is most likely for if you're playing with many friends. After choosing your world size the game randomly generates your unique world and drops you in.

When BEGINNING YOUR ADVENTURE you will be materialized right next to a person and his name is "Guide". If you right-click on guide he will tell you random things that are good to know like "If you find a gun I am sure a gun merchant would show up in town". He also tells you that you should start making houses for people to live in and tells you what a structure needs to be comprised of to be considered a house for someone to move in. At this point you start to notice that the sun is moving in the sky. As night approaches hopefully you have made your first house for Guide and yourself to stay in because you're just simply not that tough yet and monsters come out at night.

After your first night and some adventuring you realize one of the big aspects that makes this game a unique experience and that is Terraria breaks normal 2d conventions and focuses on a more vertical adventure and not the traditional sidescrolling horizontal 2d format. Sure you can go left and right, but if you venture too far left or right at the beginning you're going to get your butt stomped by tougher enemies. You've got to start heading down.

The game has ZERO STORYLINE and is basically void of a TUTORIAL. The snail-like beginning pacing can hinder this game at first impression, but after familiarizing yourself with mechanics, interfacing, crafting, and environment manipulation the game picks up speed. This slow burn is basically only due to the fact that the game's lack of story and a big open-world create such an absence of linearity it is hard to figure what you're supposed to do your first time entering the game. Basically there is no narrative and there is no beaten path so I am telling you now. After creating your first house for your guide start heading south.

Whether your EXPLORATION takes you up, down, left, or right the world will change as you venture out. Going down from the beginning forested area will change the world by going from textures that are dirt, mud, and clay and the deeper you spelunk the environment starts going to stone, iron, copper, and so on. The farther you venture there will begin to be water reservoirs and eventually lava. You might even break into the underworld of Hell. Venturing left and right will change the surroundings to jungle, corruption, desert, ocean, and so on. Below these different areas the underworld changes as well. Also the game supports a pretty good lighting system so remember to bring a lot of torches with you when venturing out during the night or when going down into the darkness of caves.

The ART and ANIMATIONS are just bad with 2-3 images per action. The game feels like 8-bit animations with 16-bit graphics on a PS1 sized game (little over 500mb in size). Believe me when I say that I do not think that being able to render something realistically is a telltale sign of what is 'good' graphics. For example, Castle Crashers has a very non-realistic 'cartoon-like' aesthetic, but overall the gameplay and art style clashed well and the animations were done superbly. Terraria does not connect the dots in the same way a game like "Super Meat Boy" or "Castle Crashers" does in the way they brought together their gameplay, stylizations, and aesthetics. Terraria just seems like they lacked the artistic rendering capabilities and animation knowhow. In turn, icons in your interfacing are too small and the low quality of the icons is very noticeable in Terraria because you're trying to look at them and collect them very frequently because that is a lot of what the game rotates around.

A plethora of different ITEMS and CRAFTING materials is what drives Terraria's incentives for the player to continue their adventure onward. You are constantly prospecting and mining ores and raw materials that can be used to create the game's large variety of different environmental building materials and or equipment for your adventurer. The game does a great job of trying to include materials in crafting that you will be finding forever with the hopes of making all materials found not become obsolete. For example, after you've finally found all the silver you will need and have crafted all of your sliver armor, weapons, and mining equipment for your character you can then use the silver ore for vanity of your constructs you have been building like; silver plated bricks, chandeliers, candle sticks and so on. Also, those silver armor pieces will come into play later as a crafting component in an even more precious set of armor after progressing deeper into the game. Terraria's crafting is top notch and is probably one of the best features in the game.

The gear is what brings about your real CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION as there are no stats or talent tree skills to distribute. Gear feels a bit like from "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night", but because of the in-depth crafting system makes it feel like it is much more intelligent than just randomly finding gear drops after killing a creature multiple times. On that note though, you find ore (or whatever is required) and put together great suits of armor that give you defense points and lower damage intake and you also create weapons which heightens damage output. Broad sword swing slower but arch way above your character then to your front side, whereas short swords are super-fast but only do a stab motion in the direction to your immediate front. Some weapons throw out a huge ball and chain and it kind of slams down then waits a second then it comes back with a yo-yo-like attack. There is also bows and arrows, guns, and spells. What I am trying to say is that there are many different weapons and they do affect combat and fighting style. You also have a few slots for accessories which really can change your character. Accessories range from things that make you run really fast after a few yards to double-jump and rocket boots or things as simple as a watch to tell time or a depth meter. There are 4-5 accessory slots in total and they really add to the overall character customization.

As for getting more resilient Terraria is more like an old school Metroid-type game. You do not get experience from killing monsters and going up levels. Instead, you gain more health points from finding randomly placed heart-shaped stones that are underground. You need a hammer to smash the heart-stone and then you grab your HP boost (energy tanks from Metroid). Also, at night time shooting stars will randomly hit the ground and you have to pick them up before dawn because they will disappear when day comes. After collecting ten of these you can then combine them and increase your mana pool (kind of like missile expansions). Mana is used for spells and to fuel some of your weapons and items. Some other aspects feel as though they pay homage to games like Zelda because you can craft things like a grappling hook and you can find weapons like a boomerang.

The game has super simple COMBAT that has strangely deeper nuances when looking at all of the game's items like; magic, buffing and HP potions (long list), ranged attacks like bows and arrows or flintlock pistols or even laser blades and guns. For the most part though, enemies seem to just try to ram or fly into you. Their movements are extremely predictable and fairly easy to overcome. Bosses can be great and they do some different things, but most simply try to ram you. On a similar note, it can take a very long time before you fight your first boss which is what I believe is part of the game's slow pacing. To trigger most bosses you have to do something in order to summon them or it will just randomly spawn after so many night/day cycles.

MULTIPLAYER is a blast once you can get through the game's horrible hoops in order to participate in someone's game. There are no servers to provide stable and reliable connectivity for you and your group. The online multi-player is peer-to-peer so your connection is only going to be as good as your host's. No local co-op.

It has only been a short month since Terraria's launch and this indie game has basically sold roughly 450k copies. So if you don't have any friends to play with there is a pretty good sized community out there that can be found on forums for the game either on Terraria's site or sites like Giantbomb's community forums for the game.

In multiplayer you can trade items by tossing them on the ground for a friend to pick-up. You can also build or…destroy constructs together and it is always more fun to have three pick axes with you than just one. Be careful though, anyone who enters your world can throw grenades around your favorite castle you've been working on.

If they really make you angry the game does support a really fun PvP and group PvP function. The host can hit escape and there are four differently colored shields below two swords that are crossed. If you just simply push the crossed swords it is every man for them self or each player can pick a colored shield and they will be on that colored team which makes players of the same color impervious to one another's attacks. Bombs, grappling hooks, swords, and guns make this a very fun experience. It is also great fun to tell one another "okay, you have until the sunsets to build a fortress and then we're attacking it" and try to sack their construct before morning comes.

Lastly, the music of the game is pretty awesome, I quite frankly love it. It is too bad though that there is not a large variety in tracks and after too long they become background noise and are a bit repetitive after hours of play. Though they are also intelligently placed at intervals in adventuring depths which can really help to indicate when you're getting down far enough to a new level of difficulty and or back up to a comfortable level of safety.

The VALUE of the game is outstanding. I got my copy for 5$ off steam and that is cheaper than a matinee at the theater for only 2-3 hours of entertainment; Terraria will deliver more satisfaction pound per pent than that any day of the week. I clocked in over 40 hours before I wrote this review and reaching the end and or being board of it seems to not be in sight just yet.

================================ALL IN ALL========================================

Terraria feels a bit like a two-dimensional spelunking dungeon crawl. Adventure and action turns into exploration, torches, bombs, picks, glow sticks, grapple hooks, gravity potions, rocket boots, etc…because this free roaming 'sandbox' game is loaded with tons of items and materials for the player to experiment with along with monsters and bosses to conquer. The environment is able to be manipulated by the player and is malleable to your mind's eye and is fun to construe with the materials you have at hand. Tiered gear up-grades and finding new materials is the incentive that drives the player to go onward because the game lacks any story. Bad character animations cannot hold back this game's filled-to-the-brim potential content and fun that can be had by yourself or even more so when friends are thrown into the equation. Do yourself a favor and spend the small fee to enjoy this good game and then dig in deep.