To be honest, I tend to get rather overwhelmed by games that give me too much freedom.  A game that can be played almost endlessly is more akin to a nightmare to me than the exciting prospect that it really should be.  Sure, I do like freedom in my games, freedom to complete a challenge differently than someone else, freedom to finish tasks in any order.  But in general, I prefer structure and clearly defined goals.  That is why I’ve never really been interested in popular games like Minecraft and Terraria.  Nevertheless, because it’s sometimes fun to try something new, I decided to download the demo for the latter.  And confusion ensued.

Having now only completed the tutorial for Terraria, I’ve only scratched the surface of what this game has to offer.  Said tutorial taught me all about switching between the various menus and how to dig and how to build a small house.  As mentioned before, having never played such a game before, I was already rather baffled by what was going on.  And again…this was just a tutorial.

At first, I struggled quite a bit with an endless barrage of little bouncing enemies, which were quite a nuisance when I was just trying to figure out what I was doing.  Not understanding how to wield my sword properly, I settled for flailing my pickaxe about whenever an enemy approached.  My next obstacle was figuring out how to dig with said pickaxe.  I tend to skim through reading, especially instructions, so I quickly realized that I had missed the directions on how to move my cursor and, hence, couldn’t dig with any accuracy at all.  Finally, I realized that the cursor was controlled with the right analog stick all along, and I got to work digging straight down.  Only to realize I had dug myself into a pit lined with a material I couldn’t dig through, as far as I could tell, forcing me to form rough platforms in the walls above me in order to climb back out.

Needless to say, my time with Terraria was kind of a mess.  I did finally learn how to dig better and reached a room underground.  I learned how to make wooden platforms to get back out again.  I was then instructed to build a house, which I gave super tall walls so enemies would stop jumping inside.  My house is…laughable, to say the least, but the game accepted it eventually and dubbed my time with the tutorial as finished.

From what I’ve read online, there is apparently so much you can do in this game.  It sounds like there are boss fights and a whole variety of locations to explore, including these creepy sounding ones that corrupt the biomes bordering it.  There’s some sort of final boss you can work towards.  And of course, there’s the whole crafting and building aspect.  I suppose you could probably construct an entire city and populate it with other characters.  Or something.

That all sounds really cool…if I wasn’t total rubbish at these kinds of games.  I see why this game is so popular, and if this is your kind of thing, then you’ll no doubt want to try it for yourself if you haven’t already.  As for me, I immediately quit after the tutorial because, again, this game is just too overwhelming for me.  It was certainly interesting trying something totally different, but I think I’ll stay with my safe, structured games that don’t give me too much freedom to stray off the main course….