Minecraft: Also Try Terraria!

Minecraft and Terraria are two games that have a lot in common with each other. One of those similarities happens to be that gamers at Alsion like both of them. (see my previous article: https://witherlyheights.org/the-tastes-of-alsion-gamers/ ) I sent out a survey to find out how else they can be compared; here are the results.

By: Jayden Cammarata

Both Minecraft and Terraria are often played due to the social aspect of playing the game with friends. Of the 7 survey resopndents who played Terraria, 5 of them gave detailed responses about what they thought about the game, and 3 of them explicitly mentioned playing the game with others; 7 of the 11 Minecraft-playing resopndents gave detailed responses to the survey, and 4 of them reported playing the game with others. 

Several people also play both games due to their mods and fanmade content; 2 of the verbose Terraria players played on servers or with mods, as did 4 Minecraft players. So, about half of the players of both games play them with others, and about half also change the game somehow before playing it.

One interesting similarity between the two games was that the reviews they got matched almost perfectly. The survey respondents overall gave Terraria 4.43 stars and Minecraft 3.36 stars (out of 5). This was an incredibly close margin– if one person had given Terraria 4 stars instead of 5, Minecraft would have been the higher rated game.

However, there were also some noticeable differences between what people thought of the two games. According to several people, Terraria was a much harder game to get into; 3 of the respondents mentioned struggling more with that game than with Minecraft. 

Possibly because of this difference, people often played Minecraft for much longer than Terraria. 5 out of 11 Minecraft players estimated that they had played it for over 1000 hours, and another 3 estimated that they had hundreds of hours of playtime or simply “a lot” of playtime; for comparison, only 1 out of 7 Terraria players had played over 1000 hours, and just one more had played for hundreds of hours.

Minecraft and Terraria have a lot in common with each other. Aside from their gameplay being very similar, they’re both games that are best played with friends, and they’re often played with mods or on servers. However, there’s also a lot that’s different between them. Several of the survey’s respondents agreed that Terraria is a harder game, and some people mentioned other differences. For example, someone complained about Minecraft updates feeling emptier than Terraria’s, someone else brought up Terraria having much more content than Minecraft, and one person claimed that Terraria’s combat system is far better than Minecraft’s.