Terraria

One thing I really like about the game is the music. Typically a game like this has very repetitive music that gets annoying after a while, but i honestly never got annoyed with the music at all. From a design standpoint, I really like two things about the game: 1) The game starts you next to a guide that can help you if you need it and 2) the way that item combinations work. The game shows you everything you can make and shows you the mats that it takes, assuming you have them. One thing I would change about it is that I would always show all items that you have ever made, and just grey out the ones that you cannot make currently.

There are a few problems that I see with Terraria. First of all, the multiplayer part of the game wasn’t working by default for myself and two other tech geeks, so we had to download a program called Hamachi to get it to work (Hamachi can be downloaded here)

Also, just like Minecraft, there really isn’t a clear goal. That being said, I was constantly driven by exploration, and I never really felt like the game got boring until I thought I had everything in it, which took MANY hours.

I also didn’t like that there was no noise when your health is low. Sure, it’s annoying, but it lets you know when you be careful, or when to chug a potion.  I found that I died many times just because I wasn’t constantly watching my health.

Finally, I wish that mana was actually useful. When you first get an item that uses mana, it may seem decent, but mana using items greatly decrease in value as time goes on.

One thing this game can probably do without is fall damage. It wasn’t terrible or anything, but it just doesn’t really make sense to me. That being said, there is an item you can get to negate it, but I think it should have just been gone to begin with.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend buying Terraria. The cost to fun ratio is amazing!  The game only costs $10!

Terraria Item Combinations