The Major Key to Terraria’s Success

The Major Key to Terraria’s Success

the day was May 16th 2011 and Little Baby Terraria popped right on up of course the little fella was an instant success it sold a ton of copies a few people made a whole bunch of money you know the story terraria’s massive but why well I don’t really know but I do have a hunch the thing that Terraria has that sets it apart from the rest and brought it through 14 strong years its art style let me break it down for you so you know how literally every popular thing goes through trends and phases over time cuz stuff gets kind of boring after it happens a lot so basically what I’m thinking is that Terraria popped up right at one of those times where we just needed something new and something about little old Terraria at the time this art style caught the attention of the people so what about Terraria’s art style caught the people’s attention well it’s awesome i mean like what else is there even to Hold up i’m getting a call hello uh hey there’s there’s more to the video right i mean I got an outro still and an outro dude you got to explain like you could talk about the whimsical style and the contrast and it sounds so good and oh my gosh it’s so good also you’re going for 10K subs soon so if everyone enjoys they should probably subscribe right yeah you’re right okay I I’ll I’ll keep going um where were we taria’s art style begins with the first piece of the puzzle whimsy i kind of mentioned this earlier but the whimsical style of this game is literally everywhere the first boss is a massive eyeball that grows teeth the colors pop everywhere you go and the item variety is super random in sort of a fun goofy way like your equipment setup can literally be flippers an umbrella and a cloud in a bottle in like 10 minutes of play time i rest my case you can see this in the enemies as well it’s like they took every creature they could possibly think of drew some out of a hat and now we got the craziest lineup you could imagine it’s like throwing like Danny Devito in the in the NBA this gets even more obvious in hard mode cuz on top of dripping out all the old guys there’s a whole ton of new ones that are like unexplainable like of course we got clowns roaming around in the blood moon you know duh and uh you know icing on the cake pig fish and it goes invisible this is cool right like this is convincing so yeah enemies I feel like are one of the better ways to show my point here but this can also be seen in biomes weapons NPCs even they all have that crazy whimsical interesting variety and speaking of variety the next artistic component is contrast this is the one that I found to be the most fascinating as I was working through this video basically what I mean is that when you’re playing Terraria you can find skeletons mushroom jellyfish and this dude in the same world and it all feels Terraria you can go from lovely ocean to corruption and then hell and that’s Terraria the bosses contrast a ton weapons especially do i mean the bubble gun is an endgame weapon also fruitc cake chakram yep basically what I’m getting at is that the art style establishes itself so well that literally anything can be added and that’s Terraria you ever seen like a new Pokémon or Minecraft mob gets revealed and everyone says it looks modded or fake well that doesn’t really happen with Terraria at all with the exception of maybe collab enemies but Deerclops isn’t the weirdest thing Terraria has and I feel like even the collab guys they they kind of fit okay now I want to do a bit of a deepish comparison of some visuals let’s take a look at Starbound cuz you know it’s pretty easy to compare here’s a nice little diverse group of some Starbound enemies notice how they all just kind of blend in with each other they’re all just kind of the same like they’d all be good pals or something i don’t I don’t know not a whole ton of personality differentiation you know like it’s really hard to pick a favorite in a bad way now here’s some Terraria enemies hard mode and preh hard mode they just mo not going to lie they all feel defined and interesting there’s so much variety in all the different types some big fish dragons unicorns goofy looking fellas they all just feel so nicely different and a lot of other games just ain’t doing all that all of those Starbound enemies are kind of just little alien guys like they can’t just add whatever they want without veering off from what works and with Terraria all of it works they literally have everything imagine like a full ecosystem like the thing you learn about when you’re like 9 years old in school that’s Terraria’s art style not that games like Starbound don’t have like Predators and Prey and stuff it’s you know it’s a it’s like a metaphor it’s pretty advanced stuff I know so now that I’ve driven Starbound 6 feet under the biggest game that’s always being compared with Terraria is Minecraft of course I don’t think that Minecraft has the same thing as Starbound where the variety feels shallow but aside from a couple of obvious ones pretty much every Minecraft mob or item could totally fit into Terraria in some way with no issues in my opinion however so many Terraria enemies weapons etc just wouldn’t work in vanilla Minecraft like imagine an Eye of Cthulhu for example because of the visual style that Minecraft has developed it could just never fit and of course again Terraria style is what lets it be so all over the place in a positive way and have stuff like the Eye of Cthulhu on top of bunnies and you know whatever yeah all right moving on let’s explore a different type of art music oh golly goodness the Terraria music is fandidlytastic obviously it is just wellmade but more importantly it’s super unique and it pulls together that wacky vibe that the rest of the game has each track fits with a specific boss or biome or you know whatever and they take the fact that you could literally be fighting a mechanical Santa Claus tank and the music just embraces the crap out of it like combining everything I mentioned so far they made that feel normal it’s a Santa tank what it’s a Santa tank what the Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa and that ladies and gentlemen is the exact point I’m trying to make somehow with the combination of all of whatever I just said terraria’s art style might just be why it holds such a little special special little special little place in our hearts a Okay okay now the last thing I wanted to highlight here that kind of expands upon literally everything I’ve mentioned at this point is that Terraria low-key was ahead of its time when it dropped not exactly the art style but the gameplay and the mechanics and everything I feel like was ahead of its time and possibly why it might have lasted so long and been big for so long also though if it looked like this in 2025 would people still be playing it i don’t I don’t know i don’t I don’t think so however it doesn’t look like this in 2025 because they took that beauty of the art style that they already had expanded upon it as the years went on made it modern made it sleek and clean updated all the music bosses enemies biomes whatever and dude they absolutely cooked like this is why this is why this is why they’re doing it right aside from a few like Minecraft when big games these days change up the visuals it’s to make Snoop Dogg and Naruto fit in with everything else like this improvement of what was already Terraria’s perfect formula is what I believe to be why Terraria is where it is today hold on hold on hold on am I Am I glazing too much nah [Music] whoa whoa whoa don’t go yet don’t go yet i see you clicking off got to see all the lovely members on the left side of the screen real quick and also like and Oh and also like and subscribe if you enjoyed and also like drop a comment hit the notification bell

In this video, I talk about how Terraria could’ve succeeded using specific style choices. Specifically, I mention the art style that Terraria brings to the table and how it is so good compared to other games.

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