I think I may have offhandedly mentioned this in a previous post, but in case I didn’t, I’ll relate it again here: I was recently gifted a copy of Terraria, and I have been playing it more than I initially thought I would.

For those who haven’t heard of Terraria, well… saying it’s 2-D Minecraft both is and isn’t fair to the game. Here, let me delve into this a bit:

Minecraft and Terraria have a lot of similarities. A lot of them. They’re both about digging, mining, and building. They both have a day/night cycle. They both involve crafting by way of mixing various ingredients together. They both involve avoiding monsters. Moving from one game to the other is a pretty smooth process.

I’ve noticed a couple of differences, though. Aside from the big obvious one (Minecraft is 3-D, and Terraria is 2-D), I think Minecraft puts a lot more emphasis on the building side of things and Terraria on the survival side of things.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of survival in Minecraft or a lot of building in Terraria. But let’s talk about the monsters, for example. Not only are they more abundant in Terraria (and more difficult to sequester yourself from), but you’re actively encouraged from the start not just to avoid them, but to fight them.

Take the torch, a common and necessary item in both games. In Minecraft, you make a torch by putting coal on a wooden stick. Both of these ingredients are farmed from harmless things on the map– trees and mountains. In Terraria, you make a torch by combining sticks and gel. Gel is something you obtain by fighting slimes. You want light? You gotta kill monsters.

This difference in the game’s “mindset” is also seen in their respective methods of health regeneration. Minecraft has auto health regen (on sandbox mode, anyway). Terraria doesn’t. You restore your health by drinking potions that you craft out of materials that you have to find by wandering the big, scary, monster-filled world.

The mining and building is still a big part of the game, of course, but it’s all much quicker to accomplish and the crafting is more streamlined, as if the game is telling you to get on with it so you can get back to killing monsters.

Anyways, those are my first impressions of the game. I’ve really only played three or four hours of it at this point, mostly just poking around, so there are probably a lot of things I haven’t covered. In the end, I wouldn’t call this game either an evolution or clone of Minecraft– rather, it’s the same concept, but taken in a different direction. And it may not be Game of the Year material, but it’s certainly worth a look if you’re fond of this “genre”. And I do have to give props to a sandbox game that I frequently jump into directly after getting bored with a Minecraft session. Bored of digging? Let’s go dig some more!