Terraria is a sandbox adventure game that I’ve played since elementary school. One dynamic that I love about the game is how visceral your progress feels as a player. This happens because, like any adventure game, there are boss battles that unlock new things, giving you resources like gold, NPCs, weapons, and materials. But unlike other adventure games, the progress is not only visible in the character, as you gain health and mana, but also through changes in your environment. The biggest example of this is the transition from pre-hardmode worlds to Hardmode when you defeat the Wall of Flesh. When this happens, new ores and materials appear in places that you have previously discovered, which means you have to go back and find them. The Hallow is now a biome, and the monsters in other biomes become stronger and more plentiful. This dynamic also appears in other small ways: when you explore, you literally illuminate sections on a previously all-black map, making your progress feel tangible. One of the end-game ores, chlorophyte, “grows” naturally with light, meaning that it is possible to always come back and mine more. By transforming the very world of the sandbox, progress has a very tangible, linear feel, and there is always something “left” to explore.
