What Makes Terraria so Awesome (or Friends and Their Virtual Legos)

The summer of 2011 I moved from my long time home of Vancouver, Washington. In the process I left behind several friends who are really like family to me: Regina being one of them; my friend Trevor being another. Trevor and I met within a couple of months of me first moving to Vancouver and we hit it off immediately. He is one of my oldest and dearest friends now. Truth be told, he is more like a brother. 

If you recall from my first appearance on the Game On Girl podcast, I often use online gaming to stay in contact with friends and family. This is one of those stories. 

I don’t know how Trevor originally tried to sell me on Terraria, but I assure you, it was not an easy sale. The reason is that I really hate retro games. I love the games of the past, but for the most part my feeling is it’s in the past. The present has much prettier and exciting games to offer and Terraria is a 16 bit looking game. 

Trevor started playing Terraria around late summer or early autumn of 2011. And though I don’t remember now, I’m 100% positive that he kept telling me about it and trying to wrangle me in. Me being me, I am sure that I resisted the whole time, until finally Trevor bought me a copy of the game through Steam while it was on sale. 

That was around November/December of 2011 and I’ve been playing it ever since. I play it on a fairly regular basis still and have over 400 hours logged on it according to Steam. Here’s why:

Terraria does have some progression and some boss fights, but that’s not what makes the game great in my opinion. It’s the sandbox and building aspects of it. You spend a lot of time exploring the world for resources, both to make your character stronger and to gain materials for building. This is fun in and of itself. Every time you come into a cavern and see a chest that could have a new piece of gear or a vein of ore in a wall, you immediately have that feeling of a kid at on Christmas morning. 

Building things is my favorite part of the game. Trevor and I have spent hours and hours just one building. We have created castles that go hundreds of feet into the sky, buildings based on Chinese and Japanese architecture, log cabins, and igloos. Trevor even created a replica of the gate house of Schloss Neuschwanstein. It is the perfect game or past time when you don’t want to play something “high impact” and just want to relax. 

I’ve joked to Trevor that we are playing virtual Legos when we are in game. But the truth is we really are. When we work together to build something in Terraria I feel a bit of nostalgia. The way I felt when I was a kid and played Legos with my cousins. Thanks for that, Trev. 

What do you think of Terraria? Have you played it? Did you enjoy or hate it? Why? Let us know in the comments or reply to @MarsUller or @game_on_girl on Twitter.