December 26, 2011

  • Terraria

    Today, I went to Dan's house for a merry gathering of people in Tampa over break. Suddenly, I was overcome by a great round of folly, and asked Mason if I could play with his Terraria. He set his computer up at the game table and let me onto his Steam account.

    I wanted my first actual play of the game to be as authentic as possible, with all the challenges that new characters face. Catalan's adventures in a Cartesian world began very very poorly. Come the first nightfall, the world filled with zombies, and she walled off a ditch to hide in until sunrise. She finally did manage to build a walled little hiding place, but not before her little burrow filled with insulting little tombstones saying things like "a zombie put an end to Catalan's flailing." Eventually, she found enough ore to make a bigger sword, and then she was able to survive the nights outside. She still died often, and the land became littered with tombstones.

    For a while, I tried to dig Catalan to the Underworld, but something always came along and killed her and sent her back to respawn point. I gave up and spent a few in-game days making a voyage to the left edge of the world. There, the land gave way to water that went deeper and deeper. I wonder now if I could swim, perhaps the world would wrap around, and she'd come up on the other shore? As it was, I had to wait until Catalan sank to the bottom, and then jump up a few blocks' height, and so that instance of Catalan drowned.

    I never was able to reach the right edge of the world. There was a big gray blot of Corruption, where no light could shine and the land was filled with holes. I kept falling into things and losing all my hit points on impact. I kept getting eaten by big fanged flying trilobites.

    The most annoying thing is how difficult it was to progress at all, because in order to make anything, I had to mine a whole lot, and that meant a great deal of getting killed by things underground. I think I'm a lot fonder of watching it than playing it. I think I'd like to never play it again.