Terraria

I had started playing Terraria maaaany updates ago, but stopped and thought to give it another try with the Journey's End final update. Back then (almost five years ago!) the invisible 'timer' that was on with the world evil spreading the more you took your time made me not really feel able to give proper building a try. The corruption spread system stressed me out to the point I felt I had to keep rushing to outpace the difficulty spike in hardmode and it eventually dulled my enthusiasm. I played hundred of hours of the game, but stopped before I even got to experience all of the content. With that in mind, I can now confidently say that the Journey's End update is absolutely fantastic and more than enough reason for returning and new players to give Terraria a try. The game was already great even before the update/s, but I'll focus on giving some feedback on that since that was the reason I came back to the game: The Journey world and characters you can now optionally make allow you to control your experience and how you want to play. It's as close to 'creative mode' as you can get, while still giving you a reason to go out and explore everything (ex. to unlock unlimited use of x ore, you have to mine y amount of it first, etc). You can control enemy difficulty on the fly, pause time, change the time of day, weather and even turn off the spread of the corruption/crimson with the click of a button. You can take your time and build your dream base and have a more relaxing time until ready. Needless to say it should now be way more friendly to newcomers who might be unfamiliar with the combat style or might want a relaxing 2D building/mining game or just recruit all the NPCs instead. This update successfully makes the game extremely more adaptive to different ways you may want to play. This amount of choice given in this update is something I cannot praise enough. Truly a fantastic end to a game that was supported and improved on consistently for nine years.

I picked this up during a thanksgiving sale back in 2011 near the price of two bucks. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I booted up the game and generated a world. I first noticed when I began that I had no real direction. You are given basic tools and a weapon and given instant freedom to wander your new world. I immediately set out to dig myself a hole and collect materials. I ended up falling into an underground lake and suffocating. 50+ hours have since gone by and I still have numerous bosses to find and defeat and plenty of gear to create. I can tell that this game is a labor of love from the developers and their continued support shows they still care about it. There is a wiki for the game and most of the things to see and do. If you are anyway still on the fence about picking this up, I suggest looking for it and see if it is appealing to you. The game's nonchalant pace and charming pixel art help bring me back every few months to dig, chop, build, and explore.

And only 10 bucks, no DLC, no microtransactions. The full thing, 300+ hours of gameplay in my case, just sitting there available to anyone. In my imagination, these devs regularly have to fend off hitmen sent by Epic Games and Microsoft to kill them in epic rooftop duels with dramatic lightning strikes in the background. Terraria might be considered 'for kids', it might not have an adult storyline about a grizzled legendary monster hunter and his two hot girlfriends, but in terms of price to value, it easily stands as the best game of all time. The combat is satisfying, the enemies and weapons are varied, the bosses are manifold, the progression path is well thought out. The basic gameplay is that of 2D minecraft, but the attention to detail and options for customization are immense. The environments are varied, the hazards are intuitive, the mini-biomes and set pieces are fun and traversal is full of interesting organic moments and discoveries. And it supports LAN, on top of regular multiplayer. The games industry seems to have moved away from LAN connections? Screw that, and screw the games industry with a ten foot pole. Buy Terraria.

I have about 600 hours in this on steam and just bought it again on GOG........ its that good I need two copies Openworld sandbox, simple to learn (with help from the wiki anyway) yet surprisingly in depth and challenging..... Also you can farm fish for gold using a crab powered engine

I have about 150 relatively contemporary games, including great indie games and AAA games, and I spend plenty of time on them. Despite this, over the past three years I have spent more time on Terraria than all of those other games combined. In Terraria, you can build sprawling complexes, explore, kill stuff, summon and fight bosses, craft, work with your friends, hunt your friends, use mods to quickly design vast new adventure maps, whatever you want. You can squeeze in two minutes when you have a little down time, or stay up through the wee hours because you keep on adding just one more thing. You can play alone, with other adults, or with your kids through a relatively painless LAN. I love the style and the content, but what I most value is the freedom. The developers have kept adding content long after they easily could have simply cashed in on a sequel. This is a fantastic game with a great community. If you look at the reviews over at Steam, you will see that many of us have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours on Terraria. I am thrilled that it is finally available DRM-free at GOG.