Does it get any more awesome than that? I have a hard time imagining how.

Terraria appears to be an unapologetic 2D sidescrolling Minecraft clone on the surface, but becomes so much more. Yes, the world is make of blocks. Yes, you mine them, you cut down trees, you build houses to survive the night. But where Minecraft is about exploration and self-expression, Terraria's about combat and character progression. Think Zelda meets Minecraft.

You don't just build a house for yourself in Terraria. You build houses to attract NPCs. NPCs like you'd find in an RPG town. A Merchant, a Demolitionist, a Nurse...they'll move into houses you build. Then you explore, and build new armor and tools (none of which wear out). As you explore, you can find rare items and even rare monsters. There are bosses, which can be summoned or occur as random encounters. Bosses like the Eye of Cthulhu. There are also random events at night, like the Blood Moon, which sends HORDES of zombies your way, ready to fall to your blade while trying (and maybe succeeding) to eat your townsfolk.

One of the best things about Terraria is that your character and world saves are separate. You can take any of your characters to any of your worlds, even to other players' multiplayer worlds, with stats and inventory intact.

So yeah, I killed the Eye of Cthulhu with a lightsaber after exploring a forest of giant glowing mushrooms. It was awesome.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGo7iMUcxLc[/youtube]

Very impressed.

I've been really enjoying it for the past week or so with a couple friends online. It's a fantastic game and full of character and innovation, regardless of it's ties to Minecraft.
Regarding MC...the two games seem to have completely different learning curves. With Minecraft, the more you experience the deeper the gameplay gets as you start out with nothing. You can also figure stuff out relatively easily in that game.
Not so with Terraria, the game throws you to the wolves and get's easier from there. You go from dying repeatedly from gels to relaxing in the lava jacuzzies in the depths of Hell with your fire imp buddies decked out in armor and weapons forged on the anvil of Satan. My amount of deaths in that game plotted would look like Cryten's forehead. Once you have more health than jesus and at least gold armor with a healthy supply of potions you are neigh ukillable.
It's more of a cohesive game than Minecraft is with better defined goals(Even if you have to scour the wiki to figure out what the f*** you are supposed to be doing) yet it doesn't offer near as much creativity as MC. Sure I made my giant health potion of lava but the options for construction are fairly limited compared to it's 3d cousin.
SO Terraria is like taking shots of cask strength whiskey. YOu have the time of your life for a bit but ultimately forget everything you ever did.
Whereas MC is like a good cabernet. Takes time to learn to enjoy the subtleties of the drink and get's better with a little age.
I hope that rambling made sense...doctor gave me a trial for ambien and it really messes with your short term memory. I've alread forgotten most of what I typed...

Oh yeah. Just downed the Skeletron solo. No match for my Molten Armor and Flamarang. Now into the dungeon with my Muramasa propeller-death-of-doom for mad loot.

Thanks for the heads-up about this one, MoD! I will be downloading it very soon (for $10 it sounds like a helluva deal).

I'm really hoping that, with the success of Minecraft, we're going to see a renaissance of "retro-gaming". I miss side-scrollers, and I think Terraria would be fun as hell to play on Wii. I enjoyed the crap outta NSMB:Wii and DKC: Wii.