Terraria is an action-adventure sandbox video game you should try if you want to explore a 2D universe full of bosses, monsters, items, and countless possibilities. Polished throughout the years, it offers a crazy amount of content you will love to discover.

What is Terraria?

Terraria is an independent action-adventure sandbox video game developed by Re-Logic and first released in 2011. Over the years, the game has continuously been improved in many ways and now features exploration, crafting, building, painting, combat against many different creatures and bosses, events, and more. In September 2022, an update named Labor of Love was released and introduced even more content and bosses.

Gameplay

Shape your experience: You can tweak the generation settings of your experience based on a deterministic seed, the map size (small, medium, or large), the difficulty level upon death for your character, and also the difficulty level of the world, as discussed below.
Biomes: You will travel across many different biomes, and every one of them has its own look, terrain blocks, collectible items, backdrops, critters, enemies, theme music, and more. All the different biomes are Forest, Underground Layer, Cavern Layer, The Underworld, Space, Snow, Ice, Desert, Underground Desert, Ocean, Jungle, Underground Jungle, Jungle Temple, Glowing Mushroom, The Corruption, Underground Corruption, The Crimson, Underground Crimson, The Hallow, Underground Hallow, and Dungeon.
Craft and shape the world: You can craft many different items using different crafting stations, including Work Bench, Furnace, Hellforge, Iron Anvil, Cooking Pot, Demon Altar, Crimson Altar, and more. In your inventory, you will find everything you need to start crafting. As an explorer, you can collect many different resources, cut down trees, build a shelter to stay safe when the night comes, or make more elaborate houses you can customize the way you like.

Weapons and armors: You can equip and use many different weapons depending on your play style and the enemies you face, including melee weapons (swords, yoyos, spears, boomerangs, flails, etc.), ranged weapons (bows, repeaters, guns, launchers, grenades, etc.), magic weapons (wands, magi guns, spell books, etc.), summoning weapons and more. Of course, you can also find many different armors you will love to discover.
NPCs: Many different NPCs (non-player characters) inhabit your world, most of which are vendors from whom you can buy and sell items. Also, NPCs that moved into houses reduce the enemy spawn rate in the area and can even totally stop it. More NPCs appear when milestones are completed.
Bosses: You will have to face many aggressive and resilient bosses that will increase the challenge to the next level. Each has its pattern and may be summoned in a particular way, like using a summoning item. Defeating a boss can be useful in advancing the game in one way or another, like dropping a new item or material. Some bosses can only be fought at a higher difficulty level, and others spawn during specific events. So, come discover what evil and dangerous beings lie in the dark, like the Eye of Cthulhu, the Eater of Wolds, and many more dangerous ones.

Events: You live in an amazing dynamic environment where everything can happen. Events are time-limited scenarios where the weather or other world characteristics can change, and the enemy spawn rate increases most of the time. Events can happen randomly or after you complete some tasks.
More: Terraria has lots more to offer, and all the different features must be discovered by playing the game, as they are all part of a global and complex system that should not be explained using words but rather experienced.

Graphics and sound

Terraria features a beautiful 2D world where lots of care have been taken to create diversified and finely detailed environments. You will explore many biomes full of different atmospheres. Also, the OST and audio feedback are stunning and bring the gameplay even further.

Duration and game modes

Terraria features both solo and multiplayer experiences. It has a crazy life duration, as the single-player experience alone can last at least 50 hours, the co-op experience 57 hours, and the versus mode 77 hours. The game allows you to set up several settings that will shape your experience throughout the adventure:

Character modes

You can choose between several levels of difficulty. All modes change the penalty upon death. Once a character has been created, the difficulty level cannot be changed.

Journey: You start with extra equipment and can only play on Journey worlds.
Classic: Upon death, you drop coins.
Mediumcore: Upon death, you drop items.
Hardcore: Upon death, you drop items and cannot respawn.

World modes

This setting applies to the world and cannot be changed once the world has started generating.

Journey: You can tweak many customization options during gameplay, like duplicate items, modifying the time, the weather, the difficulty sliders, and more. This is kind of like a creative mode.
Classic: You will play the default experience without the creative freedom of the Journey mode, but not as challenging as the Expert and Master modes.
Expert: The difficulty is really increased, and the quantity and quality of drops, as well as the chances to obtain rare items, are also increased.
Master: The difficulty is way more increased, and other changes that apply to Expert mode are also applied here. As a reward, you will be able to get Master mode exclusive items.

What do the reviews say?

Terraria has scored 83/100 on Metacritic, and the game has been very well-received by many players. Truly, it is a good game.

"Still, Terraria is a great adventure, one of the best sandbox games around, and an absolute steal for ten bucks on Steam. It's well worth checking out for anyone, regardless of how they feel about Minecraft. Despite having one fewer dimension, Terraria hides greater depth than its 3D cousin." (GamePro)