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Cam is dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into a bowl of tomato soup when he feels the summons. He goes ahead and grabs it. Doesn't even drop the sandwich.
Cam and Sable in Terraria
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from_scratch
"I think I'm going to start you with the best example of the 2080s sidescroller renaissance," says Cam, and he conjures up a device. It has a screen, lower-tech than his computer, and buttons, and it invites Sable to Play Runaround!. Runaround proves to be a game that gives her a little character which she may move from side to side and up and down in a 2D environment. The first level is a tutorial; Cam does his best to cover the cultural gaps as she learns to kill turtles and collect guavas and add magic hats to her collection.
from_scratch
"There's a wide variety of genres of video games, but this one is closest of ones that I can think of off the top of my head to the vibe I get off Terraria," says Cam. "Bearing in mind that it's not my usual genre; I prefer games with more story or more elaborate puzzles than Runaraound. And better than those are civ-builders."
The tutorial level is pretty short. Sable is released into the world. She starts with a turtle shell, which is a house she carries on her back and can at any time be placed on the ground and expanded to full size so she can enter it, store objects on its shelves, pause or save, and give her character a healing nap. There are some turtles and also some wombats roaming around. "Those guys are also enemies. Most of the things are enemies, they just use the turtles for the tutorial," Cam clarifies.
The tutorial level is pretty short. Sable is released into the world. She starts with a turtle shell, which is a house she carries on her back and can at any time be placed on the ground and expanded to full size so she can enter it, store objects on its shelves, pause or save, and give her character a healing nap. There are some turtles and also some wombats roaming around. "Those guys are also enemies. Most of the things are enemies, they just use the turtles for the tutorial," Cam clarifies.
from_scratch
"Yep. The walking flowers are not enemies, the people who look like the same species as your character are sometimes not enemies, the mermaids are not enemies."
from_scratch
"Flowers are mostly decoration but in a few later levels you can observe their behavior for puzzle hints. The characters who are the same species as you are for talking to - the writing is pretty good in Runaround, but they talk and are not, really, people. The mermaids give you quests."
from_scratch
"Yeah, some of the magic hats you have to earn by doing things for the mermaids. Unless you want to steal from the mermaids, and then that mermaid tribe won't give you any more hats no matter what you do for them."
greatestgift
"Hah. They have longer memories than the whatever-they-are here, then. When I steal from one of the merchants, they only stay mad at me until the next sunrise."
from_scratch
"Of course it does. Some of the people of the character's species - they're called Rounders - are merchant types and will take your guavas and other junk for power-ups. You can't steal from them in the game, though, only the mermaids."
from_scratch
"Yep. Also, stand on this ledge for a while, and wait," he suggests, "then hop back down to that parapet."
When she does this, she finds that the wombats she disappeared from the screen have resumed wombatting about below.
When she does this, she finds that the wombats she disappeared from the screen have resumed wombatting about below.
from_scratch
It gets more complex over time.
Some of the monsters drop guavas and other goodies.
Some of the monsters drop guavas and other goodies.
greatestgift
"Blight it," she says the first time this happens. "Game things do that?"
from_scratch
"Uh, yeah, that's common in games like this, looting monsters. Do monsters here do that too?"
greatestgift
"Yes! They explode and things fall out! It happened a few times when we killed monsters on your island, but it's easy to miss, the things that fall out are usually small and there's also exploded monster at the same time. That one harpy dropped coins on you, though. I guess you didn't notice what with the harpy chunks."
from_scratch
"I had other things on my mind. Okay, I'm leaning towards 'someone is fucking with us' again here."
from_scratch
"No idea. It is clearly not the NPCs themselves, which was my original thought."
greatestgift
"Yeah. They don't have minds. It's easy to tell the difference, with groundsense. People have complicated things going on in their ground that other animals don't, and the NPCs are like... they're almost not alive at all."
from_scratch
"I mean you can argue about whether I'm alive, seeing as this one time I died, but sure."