Terraria

Classic from "Must Have" collection for Steam. Been out for ages, went through many patches  and many mods. It's a game that you will constantly go back to can easily clock 500+ hours. You can't get wrong with this game. Want to build a sky castle? Easy. Want an underground secret base? Even easier. You want a base that looks like a submarine and you want it in the ocean? Slightly harder but still easy. You can even mine the entire map not even leaving background walls behind. Big monorail that goes through the sky from one point of the map to another? You can do it. All the resources are there for you to pick and get creative with it.

Let's with what is Terraria. It's open world 2D crafting and action game with customizable worlds. You create a character, create a world then you go in. You find yourself in a forest with a dude nearby who'll help you with figuring out what do you need for crafting. From now on you on your own. Go left, right, up or down. You have a sword, an axe and a pickaxe, so go wild. There are so many things to do gathering/crafting/smelting ore/making buildings/fishing/spelunking/flying you don't even need fight bosses if you don't want (unless they invade you). Here's beginner tip: Start looking for ore and chests but look out for monster and traps. But don't forget night will fall soon, so start making your castle/base/house.

But let's dig a little deeper. No need to build a base immediately, first get a feel of it. Run around, swing your tools, explore your surroundings. Look at your inventory, customize your shortcuts, look at all those empty slots that are going to be filled soon. Curiosity satisfied? Want to start building. Let’s do that. What materials you want to build your base? Classic pick is wood and stone. Some of the crafts can be done without a station but not those that we need right now. So build your first craft bench. There you can convert wood into wooden background wall. But I also suggest that you gather some torches and stones too. So you can build a forge. There you can convert your regular stones into stone bricks which would make your house way prettier. You can also melt sand into glass to make a window or two.  But this house you build is not just for you, you can of course build it for yourself. It’s that they are for npcs to move in. Just like your guide they will help you in your life. There are over 20 of npcs, some are temporary and will stay only for a set amount of time. Most of them will sell interesting stuff to you, and two of them you would need to sacrifice, literally, to progress. But they are not just going to move in there are conditions you need to meet for them to move in. 

 Now that we get that over you are probably wondering how to get better equipment and with that you can fill all those empty slots, increase your HP and MP. For HP look for heart crystals underground, for MP you would need to gather shooting stars and turn them into mana crystals. For other you can either find new stuff in the random chests that are scattered everywhere in the world. Or you can start digging for ores. FYI pre-hard mode spawns either of those four types of ores. Lead/iron, copper/aluminum, silver/tungsten, gold/platinum. And of course demonite/crimtane but this one depends on which type of bad biome you got. Corruption for demonite, Crimson for crimtane. Just note one thing your tools have appropriate percentage of tool power. So you need to create tools out of your new ores to be able to mine next tier ore. So once you get your tier 4 armor set and weapons (just to be safe) you can start taking peeks at the bosses. First of all start with the Eye of Cthulhu or Slime King first one preferable. You can find/craft boss summon items or wait for them to invade your base. Either way you can just rush in and swing and shoot or you can prepare an arena for your boss battles and build around thing that will benefit you such as sunflowers, camp fires, heart lanterns, Bast statues. Craft some buff potions and healing potions, load up on arrows or bullets or both. For the future, you will build more than one boss arena not to mention grind arenas. Right just one more tip, all those accessories that you gathered many of them can be combined via tinkerer’s shop station. Well you got your basics, tutorial’s over. Go on, enjoy. 

In the end I would like to say, do not miss out on this game even you not a fan of open world crafting games it is worth it. There is also co-op, mods and one of the greatest OST i ever heard in a game.