Anyone else played this?

I saw this game on Steam for $2.49 a couple days ago and decided to try it, after reading about the "millions of people" who say it is an awesome game.

So, I downloaded it (28MB download!?) and gave it a whirl.

At first, it was pretty confusing as to what exactly I was supposed to do. I took me awhile, but I eventually got on to how to make a house to survive nights (zombies and flying eyeballs attack at night), but after visiting a wiki and reading some "getting started" guides, I feel I understand the game a bit more.

What I love about it:

1). Worlds are randomly generated. This means you'll never get the same setup twice, you'll never run out of places to explore.

2). You can do LOTS of stuff... build houses, shape the world, fight monsters. This is pretty impressive for some game with SNES-era graphics.

3). It is Multiplayer! I've yet to utilize this, but I think that'd be kinda neat.

4). It is such a simple, but yet addicting game. You can play it for half an hour and feel like you've accomplished something.

What I don't like about it:

1). Worlds are randomly generated. Yes, I said this in the 'love about it', but there's something negative to be said here too: Some worlds that are generated are just simply not friendly to a newbie player/character.

I've seen worlds where you start out, there's no flat ground anywhere nearby (they should have forced you to start out near a reasonably flat area) and to flatten ground yourself takes a considerable amount of time. When there -is- flat ground, sometimes it is challenging to try and get your house up before the zombies come on the first night. Also, trying to upgrade your equipment sucks when there's no copper or iron around.

Later in the game, when you start exploring, I've seen a world that had zero natural caves whatsoever, and had to dig everywhere I went and only found very small rooms here-and-there. I've had worlds where 90% of all underground caves had water (more on this later) in them, and last but certainly not least, I've had worlds that are seemingly devoid of Iron or Gold (which is what I'm trying to get more of right now).

2). You can take your character to more worlds and keep everything in your inventory and piggy bank (if you bought one).... but you can't take your houses with you. Yes, every time you start a new world, first thing you have to do is build a bunch of houses for the NPCs in that world. This is especially tedious when you're just trying to find a non-sucky world to advance your character.

3). Water. Water sucks. It can be such an annoyance. Whether you're looking for Crystal Hearts, or Skeletons to make your first Hookshot, or you're just looking for Iron/Silver/Gold Ore, finding every other cave room filled with water gets old fast. Torches (see next point) don't work underwater obviously. Glowsticks do, but they are temporary and you can't stick them to a wall like you can torches without using gel to do so, and even then, they are temporary. And yes, you will drown underwater. Supposedly there are reeds and diving helms, but those are found far later in the game than you need them.

4). Light Sources. There is no light underground or at night. You have to carry hundreds of torches on you. I can get used to this after awhile, but when you first start out, it is going to be mildly annoying. Thankfully, torches are pitifully easy to make, but are still an annoyance. It is possible to buy a helmet that radiates light, but it has low defense and wouldn't be very useful, not to mention it is expensive as all heck.

Anyways, to wrap it up, I'd have to give the game an 8 out of 10. Those of you who love realistic graphics need not apply; the game looks like a SNES game. In fact, some people have blasted the devs for using sprites very similar to Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI sprites. But to be honest, 16-bit sprites are difficult to make without making something that looks similar to one used in another game.

Replay-ability is high, there's infinite worlds to explore, equipment to be gotten, and harder challenge modes to try (If you die, your character is dead permanently in Hardcore) and they release updates for the game periodically, so there might be new bosses after awhile to try to tackle.

Controls are pretty simple and straight-forward, WASD+Spacebar Jump with Mouse by default though trying to get your character to interact with ledges that are one block wide might take a player with good motor control of their fingers. Thankfully, you can easily shape those ledges if you're having trouble.

Very fun game, very much worth the $2.49 I paid for it. It is now currently $4.99 on Steam, and I think $9.99 normally when the sale ends.

I would have easily paid $20 for a game like this. lol.