Terraria

Terraria is an adventure sandbox game with platformer elements and a side view. You will embark on a colorful journey where you can create various items, build structures, and fight against a variety of randomly generated monsters. In addition, you will encounter many different tasks and challenges.

Terraria is a sandbox in a large open two-dimensional world with resource gathering and crafting, as well as survival elements. The game has no storyline or set quests; players entertain themselves. The game is memorable for its sprite-based two-dimensional graphics, which are well-stylized for the SNES era.

The success of the game was also linked to its timely release — in 2011, the sandbox genre was not saturated with competitors, and Terraria was promoted in the gaming community as "2D Minecraft." Development of the game continues, and in 2017, the graphics were significantly improved.

Before starting the game, you need to create your character. Terraria features an advanced character editor that allows you to choose gender, appearance, skin color, and clothing. The particularly patient can create their own Gandalf, Batman, Frodo Baggins, Spider-Man, and many other famous heroes.

The further development of the character takes place in the game world, where they can eventually level up into one of four possible classes: the strong Warrior, the agile Ranger, the powerful Mage, or the cunning Summoner (who attacks with summoned creatures). The character has two main attributes — health points and mana.

Health determines survivability and decreases when taking damage of any kind — from monsters, falling from great heights, contact with lava, or underwater. In case of death, the character respawns at their base, but long searches can significantly increase health.

Mana is consumed when using magical items and weapons, but is primarily needed in large quantities by Mages.

The action of Terraria takes place in an open world that is randomly generated each time. It consists of 26 different biomes — sets of climate zones with their own flora and fauna. These include forests, deserts, snowy fields, and more.

Exploring the world is an important part of the gameplay. You can move sideways; for example, if the game starts in a forest, there may be a desert and an ocean to the left, and jungles to the right, as well as up and down.

Below the player lies a multitude of dungeons, caves, and underground versions of surface biomes. To move down, you use a pickaxe, a hammer, and an axe, which can simply remove soil, take off the next layer, or even completely clear space — the two-dimensionality in Terraria contains several layers.

Using the conventions of game mechanics, you can walk on water, jump up mountains without ladders, and store tons of crafting materials in your inventory.

The change of day and night affects the world and gameplay. During the day, the player explores, gathers resources, and stays safe. At night, they need to survive by hiding from various emerging enemies or killing them.

In Terraria, the player is required to gradually develop their character and constantly explore everything. At the beginning of the game, they need to build a box-like house and survive the first night in it. Since the character is awake all the time, it is advisable to explore the underground world at night, while during the day, they should go to the surface to fish, gather wood, continue building the base, and engage in a thousand other activities.

All the resources obtained need to be processed into useful items, of which there are several thousand — from various weapons and tools to construction, fishing, and even decorative objects. However, before crafting an item, one must first obtain its recipe. These can be found or purchased from merchants.

Crafting also requires tools — a workbench, an anvil, a furnace, and various tools. Character development will take a lot of time — starting with a rusty pickaxe and a bent sword in hand, the player can unlock chainsaws, drills, machine guns, rocket launchers, and much more.

Items are divided by rarity and quality class. The higher they are, the better the characteristics, but obtaining them is very difficult — it requires defeating powerful bosses, playing on high difficulty in expert mode, and also venturing into additional dimensions of the game world, where everything tries to kill the player or even repeat the deadly passage time and again.

Terraria features cooperative online play designed for 2 or 4 players. To start, a server with a new game world and character must be created, or one can join an existing one.

The player can set the main rules themselves — the amount of resources, player hostility, and password protection. In part of the gameplay, the actions described above are suggested to be done together, which usually speeds up the game progress.

Terraria also has other online modes. In "player versus player," players can fight to the death against each other or teams, while in the "capture the gems" mode, teams must craft gemstones and steal them from each other.