TerraWorld is waking up

The game

1. Your spirit

   Behind your own front door there is a stream, a little jetty and a house. A spirit lies curled up asleep by the water, and it is yours. When you tap it, it wakes up and sneezes. Then it looks at you.

   Your spirit has a mind of its own. It runs ahead when something glints in the grass, and it gets sleepy when you have done enough for one day. It never gets hurt in a fight.

   A look inside the game

   

2. Your words shape the world

   Everything you do can turn up a new word: fishing, mining, cooking, exploring, or a quest well done. Your spirit learns every word you find, and it casts the ones you pick.

   Words come in types, such as water, stone and wood. Some types are still out there to find.

   The word tree

   

3. Building what a place needs

   Places have needs. A stream may be too wide to cross, or a villager may have nothing to eat. There is more than one way to answer a need, so one stream might get a bridge and another stepping stones. You pick the words, and your spirit builds it on the spot while you watch.

   Build with words

   

4. Fighting with words as cards

   Out in the wild, not everything is friendly. A fight is played with your words as cards: you draw a hand and pick which ones your spirit casts. The crab on the west coast has tricks of its own, but you can see its next card coming.

   Some monsters are not as mean as they look.

   A fight with the crab

   

5. A home, and a world that remembers

   Whatever you gather, cook or win can go in your own house. In the shared world, what players make stays. The world is never wiped, and everyone can leave a mark that lasts.

   There is a party every month, and four festivals a year, one for each season.

   The seasons

   

If you played the original

If you remember your first steps out of Karmiel, Edgewood or Eyre, this part is for you.

TerraWorld Online started in 2002 and ran for more than a decade. It was a small game with a loyal community. Volunteers from that community kept an eye on the chat and helped new players find their feet, and some of them built new places with the editor.

You might remember:

• walking off the edge of a screen and straight into the next one;
• training your skills all the way to 100;
• fishing, mining and cooking your way through the day;
• a house of your own on a plot in the world;
• capture the flag, last man standing and infection;
• lag fighting, which meant hitting where someone was about to be;
• hanging out on the same screen, just to talk.

The world is coming back, with the same maps, screen for screen, starting with Karmiel. The old graphics stay retired out of respect for the people who made them, so every tile is drawn new.

The new part is how you play: a spirit at your side, and words that change the world. Fishing, mining and cooking come back, with lots of skills to train and a home of your own.

Many of you were children back then, and some of you have children of your own now. So this time the game is made for playing together.

Share a memory

Karmiel, screen by screen

For parents

Children who can read, teenagers and adults all play in the same world. So we keep to a few rules:

• Closed by default. Out of the box, your child plays without meeting strangers. A parent opens the door to family and friends.
• No AI talks to your child. Every line a character says is written ahead of time.
• Every word a player can use is checked before it reaches the game.
• The spirit gets sleepy after a while. That is a good moment to stop, and nothing is lost by stopping.

When

There is no release date yet. If you follow along, you hear first when there is something to play.

Follow along