Game Atoms – Terraria

Hello internet folks, today for you I have decided to “Craft a Dekonstruer”. This requires me to discuss the game atoms in one of my favorite games in great detail. The game I’ve decided to Dekonstruct is my most logged steam game to date – or so steam claims – with 223 hours playing. So I sure hope I can deconstruct its atoms and display them in a nice pulpous array for your reading pleasure. The name of the game is Re-Logic’s Terraria, released for Windows on 16^th of May, 2011.  How I describe the game is by saying this: so you know how Minecraft is a building game with adventure aspects? Terraria is an adventure game with building aspects, In 2D.

Now that you have some idea, let’s get started.

Player Character

In this game, unlike Minecraft, you get to customize your character right off the bat. You launch new character and you’re presented with 6 editable features: Hair, Eyes, Skin, Cloths, Gender and Difficulty. Each of the physical characteristics you pick are from a list of pre-defined sprite options, which you can edit the colour of with some simple Colour/Hue/Shade sliders. The gender option changes whether or not your sprite has a small bump on their chest, as well as the pitch of your character when they squeal from getting hurt. The difficulty allows you to set the rules that character is defined by. The choices for that are: softcore, mediumcore, or hardcore.

This game handles difficulty in a few ways: the world difficulty and the character difficulty. The world difficulty I’ll discuss later, but the character difficulty adds a nice splash for those who want more of a challenge.
Softcore, when you die, allows you to keep all of your stuff, and only half your money.  A pretty easy way to play the game if you’re playing for the first time and just want to reach one of the end goals.

Mediumcore, when you die, all of your money and stuff explode everywhere from where you died, all Minecraft style. Meaning you’ll need back-up gear at spawn if you want to see that Legendary Gold Sword ever again.
Hardcore on the other hand, when you die, you’re dead. Say farewell to that character.

Objectives

Let me make the objectives in this game abundantly clear; there aren’t any – no physical objectives anyway. There are no levels to climb, no story to complete, no credits to reach. This game is a sandbox game filled with a variant of biomes, with goals you set yourself in regards to what, how, and when you want to do things.

Though the game is mostly based on how you tackle the challenge with the gear you have (going to hell with wooden gear is totally possible, spending more than a few seconds there may not be). You, more often than not, require a previous tier of gear to get the next one to make things within the realm of possibility.  So there may not be a standard leveling system implemented, this gear tier system feels like one. They even reinforce this by requiring a tier of pickaxe to mine the next tier ores (You can’t mine Demonite without a gold pickaxe).

There are bosses in this game, and though only one is really required, killing all of them (some multiple times) allows very shiny pieces of bling.

Resources

The resources in this game come in a few forms: Stat Crystals, Potions, Accessories, Ore, Armour, and Weapons.

Stat Crystals & Potions:

These are the consumable loot found in chests. The designers implemented Mana and Heart Crystals as a treasure to find that increase – you guessed it – mana and health respectively.  There is a cap in both stats so these become literally useless after your character has reached it.

Potions range from health and mana, to iron skin and gravitation. They alter your status in a wide range of ways.

Accessories:

There are literally 146 accessories in Terraria, with only 5 character accessory slots. You can mix and match to build your character’s “class” in any fashion you’d desire. You find these as loot from enemy drops and chests around the world, and they vary in depending on the biome/enemy. Want a Shiny Red Ballon? Better find a floating island. Want a flying carpet? To a desert temple you go!

Ore:

Easiest to explain and probably the recourse you’ll be collecting the most of. Ore is found in caves and the earth itself. You’ll need this to make tools and armour, as well as furniture and floors. Ore is the resource used to make most of your armour tiers.

Armour & Weapons:

There are plenty of these, with approximately 18 Tiers of materials. That doesn’t include the special chest spawn and boss drops. The variety really gives a wide range of choice to; again, customize your character into a “class”.

World

To avoid surpassing my word limit even further, I’ll try my best to keep the world description brief and close off this article. There are 17 different biomes, all with their own discernible enemies and resources. 

You as a player will want to build rooms to let spawn of friendly NPC’s. These NPC’s can be acquired after completing certain tasks such as defeating a boss or reaching a level of health, but they will all need a room to live in.

Now, how to alter world difficulty in this game is a very neat idea. The world starts off in “Normal mode” with all of its spawns and world-gen existing and remaining the same. After you reach a certain tier when you have all the best normal mode gear, you’ll want to face the only boss that you’ll ever need to kill; the wall of flesh.

After defeating the wall of flesh, it floods the world with “The powers of light and dark” altering monster spawns, adding new biomes, and making all that gear you just worked for in normal mode to be like the wood-armour of old.

This method of hardmode activation is very rewarding as it makes the player feel like they’re “new game +” the world they’ve been playing in for the past 10 or so hours. Allowing you the feeling of ‘starting all over’ without, actually starting all over.

Information

Total – You have total information on what you’re holding, what’s on screen, your health, and any NPC health. With the mini-map displaying anything you’ve seen, you’re also given the past landscape.

Privileged – The privileged information you get is more from trial and error. You venture into a biome with dead trees and purple landscape. “Oh I wonder if I can get any neat resource here?” When suddenly an eater of worlds crawls out from the ground, eating you whole. “Oh, well I guess not yet.”

There is an NPC inside the game that can give you hints as to what you can do to further character progression, however very few are actually useful.

Hidden – All of the game tier progression is hidden. There is no way inside of the game to know where to find the resources needed for the next tier. You either need a wiki, or spend hours upon hours testing for yourself.

Sequencing

The sequencing in this game draws from the aforementioned armour tier system.. While you play the game, you’re limited to what your gear/personal skill can accomplish. You’re unable to beat the Wall of Flesh in wooden armour. Unless you had a means to acquire high end-tier fresh off the character creation screen. This is very easy to do, as you can just load into a previously adventured world, or have a friend join and hand you gear.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer isn’t anything besides having an extra set of hands to fight bad guys with. You can trade items, fight each other in combat (toggle-able PVP), and adventure together. Multiplayer is how I played most of my hours, as this game becomes a lot easier with two or more.

Final thoughts

So there is my take on the Game Atoms of Terraria. I hope I touched all of the bases that needed to be touched as I would not like to do this game disservice. If you have never played the game I highly recommend it in the future. Bring company.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

Jordon.