Terrariarrific – How Terraria Dug a Hole and Stole My Heart
By Paul Blackburn
July 13, 2011
Terraria is, as many people might describe it, a 2D Minecraft. Some would argue that it’s nothing at all like Minecraft, despite being about digging for materials, crafting items, fighting monsters and exploring, but sure, I know what they mean.
The key, fundamental difference between Minecraft and Terraria is simple: Minecraft is a creative exploration game, you dig and find materials, the purpose of which is to build grandly designed structures, mechanisms, and secret underwater bases (yes please). Terraria, however, is about the adventuring, the questing, and the looting, with a painfully cheerful injection of charm. It has more types of enemies than you can shake a lightsaber-style stick at, not to mention there are boss fights, and there are actually friendly NPCs that populate your world as you progress, offering you advice and items to help you on your quest for glory.
I’ve only really scratched the surface of it so far, and have crafted myself a handful of cool items, but it’s not just about the swords, bows, pickaxes and hammers – it’s also guns, grappling hooks, anti-gravity boots, jet-packs, magic potions, invisibility spells, torches you can actually hold, helmets with headlamps, and a ton more awesome items that I still haven’t found or crafted yet. There’s even a currency in the game, in the classic form of bronze, silver, and gold. Gold! The sweet, delicious, hard-earned funding you killed dozens of evil creatures for, which you can give to the various in-game characters in exchange for the magical, mysterious, and downright must-have items that could help you smash that giant flying skeleton head into lots of little boney pieces. Yes. Adventuring is good.
The character customization is significantly more entertaining and useful in comparison to that of Minecraft, allowing you the freedom to wear a great selection of silly or awesome things ranging from the most pointless vanity items, to the most useful armour made from Nightmare stone. Nightmare stone! Was there ever a stone you wanted more? I have to admit, I’m a little scared of it, and having to travel deep, deep, and deeper into the dreaded reaches of the earth to get your hands on the more valuable resources is even scarier. Every natural cavern and tunnel is rife with enemies, and if you aren’t being mauled by a giant man-eating worm that burrows directly into your face, or being hacked to pieces by a handful of skeleton warriors, you’d best be careful not to drop off a ledge to your untimely death, because seriously, you will lose a lot of coins. Standing at the precipice of a deadly chasm, shrouded in darkness, only to throw a torch into the abyss and watch the light slowly fall, and eventually disappear into nothingness, is truly a feeling that inspires a surprising amount of awe for a game that seems nothing more than a simple 2D Mario sandbox adventure – and yet somehow it is one of the greatest games I’ve played since Minecraft first came out.
What’s that you say? Can you build a fort and hide out from all the flesh-eating zombies and multi-coloured jelly-beasts that want nothing more than to explode your frail human body into a gooey mess of bloody chunks and coins? Can you play with your friends? Can you each assign yourself to a team colour, turn PVP on, and have a good old multiplayer romp following all your own home-made rules? Yes to all of the above, and yes, you should pay the £5-6 for this fantastic game, right now.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
Another rare game in my long list of memories that include my brother, Sam, is Streets of Rage 2. It was the best in a trilogy of side scrolling beat-em-ups on the Sega Mega Drive. (Genesis in America). We would always play as the same 2 characters: I was Axel, and my brother would be Skate. He loved the agility and bombastic acrobatics that the tiny skater dude could pull off. Many of the boss fights would end with Sam leaping onto their necks and pummelling them in the back of the head. I liked Axel’s swinging flaming punch, and his multi-hit special combo. It’s a simple but satisfying game built around stylised hand to hand violence.
Last summer, I collaborated with my mate Mark Vale to create our very first mobile game app. It’s all about pushing buttons as fast as you can. So, a great little time-waster when you’re on the loo, or waiting for your bread to toast. Mark came up with the concept, did all the programming in Unity, and I provided the art and music. There’s only one rule – hit the green light as fast and as many times as you can.
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
