Terraria

Terraria (2011) is a creative fantasy adventure game where you can build, fight and form the world in almost any way you want. Although it looks like a 2D, lesser version of Minecraft, it's just as flexible and offers more progression, weapons and dungeon boss battles. It stands out for the sheer scope and scale of what is possible - hundreds of items to collect, characters to meet and bosses to defeat.

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While keeping the aesthetics retro, the game is a complex action-adventure sandbox with a focus on exploration, crafting, building, and combat. You start with just three basic tools: a pickaxe for digging, a sword for combat, and an axe for woodcutting. Many resources, notably ores, can be found while exploring caves which are then used to craft new items and equipment.

As you progress you dig down into the world, build a home and trade with visiting villagers. This enables you to build up a war chest of impressive weapons and tools while also collecting the resources you need to develop. Triggering (and hopefully beating) the different enemies and bosses takes a huge amount of effort. Beating them when they appear takes perseverance and planning.

Like Minecraft, Terraria is a game that has developed and improved over the years as its developers have released updates. A new Terraria Journey's End version of the game offers new items, foes, creatures and even a little Golf mini-game. It also adds new difficulty modes and enhanced weather effects.

The result is a game that has a huge community of players, deep systems of lore and huge hierarchies of weapons, characters and enemies. It may look simple, but the experience is anything but.

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Our examiner, Jo Robertson, first checked Terraria 4 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 2 weeks ago.