Terrorarium

It's an enjoyable game, atleast the level builder was for me. The reason as to why i don't see myself playing this game again is because i was busy editing a level for the contest and i'd been spending about 2 hours perfecting everything, and about halfway through completion of my level the game crashed and didnt autosave.... Needless to say i wont be making anymore levels, and i highly suggest you save your level many times throught building because this game crashes often withought warning. Fix this bug please, very irritating. Otherwise great game, and hopefully i manage to build a level someday again.

https://youtu.be/1i2R1jw5xpI Ever wanted to play as a gardener tending to their gardens using little critters that you smash against walls and throw at exploding plants? If so, then Terrorarium, a little puzzler and level creator from Stitch Games, might be for you! An Early-Access build of Terrorarium was played on Windows, and a review-key was kindly provided by Stich Games and Evolve. Terrorarium is a cute little puzzle game where you solve things by walking around a map and using your critters, known as Moogu, to help you manipulate the environment. These Moogu come in a variety of types, and the idea is that you will want to use the right type to deal with each obstacle you encounter - a log in the way? Use Spicy Moogu to light it on fire. Flamethrower blocking the path? Thick Moogu’s special ability is to make a temporary wall that blocks stuff. You and the Moogu are also vulnerable to different things. They drown in water and are killed by monsters, while you will die if walking into a field of spikes. This way, navigating the map is also about making sure everyone stays where they are safe, e.g. by hurling the little blobs over a wall. Should you lose some Moogu, fear not! They are necrophilic and the survivors will soon enough try to use their fallen friends to make more Moogu. Yup, as long as there is a corpse left by whatever killed your little helpers, you can replenish your ranks easily enough. Just don’t go overboard; Get to 100 Moogu, and it’s game over, so in a few cases you may want to sacrifice a few or keep their tendencies in check. Unfortunately, the Moogu mechanics is also where the game in its current Early Access state is a bit of a let-down. There’s right now 4 types of Moogu, with different characteristics and special abilities, but you can make it through the built-in 20-odd current levels using just the fiery Spicy Moogu to light stuff on fire and the Gassy Moogu that let you get airborne. Rest doesn’t really matter as you can either walk past hostiles and breed back any losses or lop them past the problems. In a few cases, you can even just cheese your way onto the ledge of the map, and walk over to the exit. Part of this may be down to level design. An easy 2/3s of the levels feel like they are just about introducing basic mechanics, something that could be condensed down to perhaps half the levels for release, and rest feels a bit messy. There are 3 or 4 good levels, inserted seemingly at random, but the majority aren’t giving a good impression, and there’s no lore or story bits presented outside of a handful of interstitials explaining what is going on. Helping alleviate the level design problem is the Level Creator, where you can create your own maps, also known as Terrorariums, or download other people’s creations. This appears to be the focus of the Early Access builds and is fairly fleshed out with lots of placeables and several base-maps. Choose a map layout, add obstacles, creatures, and puzzles, and test your Terrorarium right there. When happy, share it with the world via Steam’s mod-system. Using Steam’s solution here makes sense, but I’ll have to admit I’ve never been enamoured with it here or in other games. The Level Creator is also not a flawless experience, but that’s to be expected for an Early Access game. It is, presently, the part of Terrorarium that most interesting, and the bit that would be worth getting the game for if you’re into building levels and making puzzles. Sure it needs polishing, and the UI needs work, it is Early Access after all, but there’s a capable level builder here and with time I’d expect to see some nice challenging Terrorariums to abuse your Moogu in. Conclusion? It’s always difficult to judge games at this stage, hence why we often don’t score Early Access games, and Terrorarium is no exception. If you like building and exchanging maps, go for it, the game is definitely worth it at the quaint price of €8.19, but as a puzzler there’s more work to be done and mechanics needing tightening. That said, I enjoyed my time with it, especially cheesing levels.

It's immersive! And as someone who's playing this for a contest in level design while not being solely focused on the task as a future job it's simple! You can get creative as you can with your current tools, though as of the time I'm sending this remember it still has quite a bit of restrictions like you can't scale monsters or place them on walls. Hopefully in the future you can since that'd open up quite a bit of options for levels and level designs. Overall it's a great game with challenging levels and creative minds.

After just over a whole month of developing levels for the Murder Garden Contest, it's time for my review of Terrorarium. [h1] TLDR: [/h1] Terrorarium is a fun and creative game with an interesting concept and encourages community participation. The developers are always active in the Terrorarium Discord server and always take suggestions by listening to their fans (Which is rare these days). Plus, You can make awesome levels for your friends and others to play and murder them with ferocious plants! What's not to like? Since its in early access, it's likely to be cheaper now than when it releases, so pick it up and try it! [h1] Introduction [/h1] Terrorarium is a 3D puzzle game in which the player must manage and utilise their 'Moogu' (small mushroom companions) to solve levels as The Gardener (Space granny). The gameplay of Terrorarium can be compared to Nintendo's title 'Pikmin' , as the resource management mechanics and concepts are similar. In Terrorarium, there is a wide range of monsters, obstacles, and hazards that you, as The Gardener must overcome alongside your Moogu. To complete a level, you must feed the 'Fairy Cake Cactus' your loyal companions and claim its delicious fruit to add to your private collection. [h1] Graphics [/h1] The graphics in Terrorarium are simply wonderful. It has its own unique style which brings out the characteristics of the characters and objects involved. Additionally, it is not graphically intensive, so you should be able to play this on even relatively low-spec laptops. [h1] Gameplay [/h1] As of writing this review, the gameplay in Terrorarium is solid. The game works as it should, collisions are great, monsters and hazards work, and the Moogu do what you want them to do (unless you have mischievous Moogu). The story mode is yet to be seen later on so I cannot comment on this. However, I believe the developers will deliver an exciting story full of fun to play levels (including player levels). The developer mode is easy to use and already has a large library of assets at your disposal to create various murder gardens which I'm sure will be expanded upon in the future. Although there are a few minor bugs, they have been brought to the attention of the developers by the community and we will surely see them resolved. [h1] Conclusion [/h1] To conclude, I think Terrorarium is a solid concept that has a lot of potential given that the community grows and the developers stay committed. They have so far built an awesome community in Discord which has led to a huge amount of level submissions and game suggestions during the contest, which I think will help the growth of Terrorarium. As the game gets updated and more things are added, I'm sure it would be a huge amount of fun playing everyone's levels in Steam workshop and seeing the endless amount of possibilities that Terrorarium could offer. In my opinion, it is worth the money even in early-access due to its functionality, creativeness, and community as an early-access title. I hope this review has given you some insight into the wonderful world of Terrorarium. Comments are welcomed. If you need help in Terrorarium, you can check out my Maker Mode Guide here which teaches you everything you need to know! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2008838744

Very niche game.