Terraria 2 news might still be some way off, but we’ve been graced with a new Terraria game in the meantime – although perhaps not in the traditional sense. The official Terraria board game promises to bring one of the most beloved and best sandbox games to your real-life tabletop, complete with all the biomes, exploration, gear, base building, and Terraria bosses you love (and hate).
In many ways, Terraria is a perfect fit for a board game. While it initially appears to be mostly just the digging and building of a game such as Minecraft, Terraria fans will be well aware that it’s much more of a full-fledged RPG game where you explore biomes, caverns, and dungeons, fight enemies, meet various helpful characters, and improve your gear to take down a range of increasingly apocalyptic bosses.
I can already see how the progression could be adapted into a board game format, although I’m curious to find out exactly how the base building plays in. The idea of creating a perfect boss arena to take on the tougher Terraria foes, as well as having to home each of the NPCs as you discover them, seems like a really fun way to approach things.
The project is being made in collaboration with Paper Fort Games. “We are very excited to work with Re-Logic,” the company says. “As an indie design studio ourselves, we have deep respect for what such a small team have achieved, their commitment to making the best game possible, and their dedication to the Terraria community. We can’t wait to bring the world of Terraria to the tabletop!”
Much like the tantalizingly teased Terraria sequel, developer Re-Logic says the board game “will take a good amount of time to develop and polish in order to land on a fantastic final version. As such we do not expect it to be available this year (for example).” The plan is to use crowdfunding “to help ensure the project can hit the scope and quality level that Terraria deserves.”
Re-Logic and Paper Fort Games are currently planning to show an alpha prototype of the game at the UK Games Expo, which is being held Friday June 2 – Sunday June 4. If you’re there, head over to stand 1-1025 and check out what they’ve got so far!
If you’re sticking to the digital version for now, take a look through the best Terraria mods for plenty of additional cool variations to the core game, and make sure you’ve got a good understanding of how Terraria happiness works. You might also fancy a browse of the best building games if you just can’t get enough of crafting. And, of course, fans of physical bases and meeples can find plenty of the good stuff in our sister site Wargamer’s excellent list of the best board games that you can buy.