GameLight - Terraria

Official Site: http://www.terraria.org/

Source: Youtube Channel demilogic

Terraria is a game I HAVE to talk about.  This was recently part of the Steam's Summer Sales and was featured on the last two days of the sale (if you scroll down, you can see them in the images).  It's a phenomenal indie developed game that mixes the sandbox aspects of building with exploration and action/adventure of side-scrollers.  To give (a possibly bad, but helpful) example, the game is like the new generation Castlevania series in that you can freely travel around the world within the game, but everything around you can be manipulated, gathered and recreated like in the indie developed game Minecraft (an equally fun and compelling game).  Terraria is often compared to Minecraft as the "2D version", but I think the difference is drawn in that Minecraft has more of a building and social aspect while Terraria is more of exploration and combat.  The game doesn't have a tutorial and pretty much plops the player right into the world that is randomly generated.  I started off the game like I did in Minecraft and walked around while cutting down trees and picking up dirt blocks.  I had to leave when I first started and came back only to find myself being at night in the game where everything is hard to see.  Suddenly, I start seeing zombies and flying eyeballs close in on me and eat away my life while striking them only scratches a piece of their health off.  I was in danger, I didn't have a strong weapon, and I didn't have shelter.  I had died 6-7 times in the span of that one night in-game time, and that was enough to teach me my first lesson: build a shelter.  Thinking about it, I could've built a barricade around me with dirt blocks and waited out the night.  But I think that's something I like about the game: you learn how to play by learning from your mistakes and experiences (like in Demon's Souls!).  Yes, the game can be a bit intimidating since everything seems kind of confusing, but it was the main attraction in that I could die as many times as I want and the most that will happen is that I get brought back to the spawn point (which is probably bad when playing on large planets).  It made exploration fun and exciting.  There is so much that can be experimented with.  Later, I joined a friend and I started learning more about how the game works.  There are deep caverns underneath that you can dig into and collect ores to craft items and equipment.  I learned how to make a shelter and protect myself from the monsters at night and how to create weapons so that I have an easier time fighting when I need to.  The combat can be anything from easy killings to insane challenges, especially the bosses:

Source: Youtube Channel NeptuneYT

If you like sandbox-like games where you have a lot of freedom of what you want to do as well as classic 2D action games, then you gotta check this game out: http://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/