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 Custom player character |  Wooden footbridge |  Desert house |
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 Player's house |  Adding on |  Minecraft? |
Like its contemporaries of The Sims and Minecraft, this game has no real storyline beyond what the player comes up with as they play. Your main task is to mine resources from the world around to build homes and craft objects. The countryside is crawling with monsters as well, which you can fight to loot their remains for unique resources and money. The game has no failure state, even when you get brutally killed by some monster or another, which is liable to happen often.
I hadn't really been aware of Terraria until about a week ago. When it came out in 2011, I was still playing The Sims 3, writing bad YA fic, and wishing I hadn't just wasted $5000 on college. Once my girlfriend and I moved in together in November 2025, she brought with her the names of all these games that she'd played while growing up, most of which I didn't recognise or had heard of but never played. Since Terraria was made for 3DS, in amongst all the other systems it was ported to, it was one of several multiplayer games that we downloaded from the hShop so we could play together.
I joked earlier that Terraria was going to take Doom's place in the "unhealthy gaming addiction" department, but really it's not. This is one of those games that, like Animal Crossing: New Leaf and The Sims Complete Collection, I'm going to play hours at a time for about 4 months before I can't bear to turn it on again, and then I'll leave it sit for the rest of the year before picking it back up and playing religiously again. Doom I just played because I was addicted to it, much in the same way one would be addicted to substances. Unlike Doom, this game's landscape is procedurally generated (ie. determined by the computer at new file creation), in amongst various other more esoteric things. Like being able to play as a cute girl with a cheerleader ponytail, for instance.
Currently, I'm on a quest to find the centre of the earth. I'll most likely find a big-ass monster that will one-shot me, but I'm going to do it anyway because I can. The other itch this game scratches is an old obsession of mine with drawing vast underground complexes for stick figure militaries to fight in. I would just fill up a leaf of filler paper with one, turn it over, label it and sign it, then start on another one. Terraria actually lets me build that, only without the stick figures. Instead, it's Kaylee Greenspan with her Shadewood Sword, cutting down the occasional Slime that makes its way down into the complex.
1000/10, would recommend for anyone, regardless of age, skill, or gender identity. The tutorial mode is basically a sandbox in its own right. Once you have the basic ideas down, you can carry on crafting and mining for as long as you like in order to get comfortable with the controls enough that you can actually begin the game. The only thing that could have been improved was the system of tree-replanting. It isn't made clear that Acorns can be planted to make new trees; also, you can't just drop an Acorn anywhere and get a tree the next time you come 'round; it's kind of frustrating when you plant trees on the exact tiles where procedural trees were and they just don't grow. Also, it would be helpful if the game would prevent you crafting more status-enhancing items when you can't do anything with them. I'm thinking particularly about Mana Crystals. Once you have all 10 units of Mana, you can still carry on crafting Mana Crystals even though they become useless.
In the multiplayer department, we caught a break with Terraria— the game had no Nintendo Network capability, conducting online play over LAN only, so you can still have all your friends over to play Terraria in the sitting room. You know, I guess being able to carry on crafting those status items actually is helpful in a multiplayer session. You might not be able to use another Mana Crystal, but I bet your girlfriend could.
