LO1 - Game Analysis - Terraria

Terraria - Xbox 360

Genre

The game Terraria is in the action-adventure sandbox genre. We can tell it's in this genre because there is combat as well as large areas of land to explore, and is an open world that the player is free to roam. It's similar to games like Minecraft, and on the Xbox 360 platform, Terraria has a slightly higher rating than Minecraft at 9/10 compared to 8.5/10.

Narrative

As it's an open-ended sandbox game, there isn't a set narrative for the player to follow. There are certain "bosses" the player can defeat in order to gain resources, but the player doesn't have to do this in a set order to be able to progress. There are different characters you are able to interact with in order to gain resources and complete tasks and challenges. The audience of people who prefer open-ended games is targeted by making the story as open as possible to give the player plenty of choice.

Production process

Terraria began production in January 2011, and was quite a quick project as it was released soon after on May 16, 2011. The developers gradually fixed bugs and added features and Terraria 1.3 was announced for PC on July 1st. It was ported to different platforms in 2013.

Characterisation

The player can interact with different characters to gain resources and complete tasks. They aren't very strong characters, as they don't need to be; they aren't the main focus of the game. They are able to live in houses that the player might build and are generally only there to use to gain resources.

Gameplay

The aim of this game is to simply survive and defeat various "bosses" the player might encounter in the game. The player can summon these bosses themselves by gaining the right resources to lure them. It's highly customisable, with an option for decorative armour as well as protective; so the decorative is visible even though the player gets the qualities of the protective armour. There is a lot of variety with colour, style and appearance in every aspect of the game, with different "biomes", like magic, jungle, crimson and snow. As the player progresses there are new bosses to face and new weapons to get, which keeps the player motivated to keep playing and progress.

Target audience

The target audience for this game are people who enjoy customisation and variety in their game.There are so many choices that would leave some people overwhelmed. This game targets their audience by giving them the variety and freedom of choice they want. It's different to games like Minecraft because Minecraft has only the basics, and less of a variety of objects compared to Terraria. 

Platform

It was originally released for Microsoft Windows, but is now available to many, many more: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Vita,
Windows Phone, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Kindle Fire, Nintendo 3DS and
Wii U.