Terraria March 2025 Update:

⏰ Updated Timeline

TL;DR: We’re updating our estimated shipping date to August 2025.

At Paper Fort HQ, we’re regularly evaluating our internal deadlines and estimated timeline. Over the past month, we’ve made improvements to the game that require some extra testing time and that necessitate updates to the game’s print files. Finalising the game’s tray design (a hugely important part of the game) and getting samples of some game components have also taken longer than we had hoped. These are critical milestones in the development process, and they directly impact the quality of the final game, so we need to give them the time they deserve.

This means that the game is going to take longer to get to you than we had anticipated; we’re updating our estimated shipping date to August 2025. As backers of many projects ourselves, we understand that this can be frustrating, so we wanted to let you know sooner rather than later and re-iterate our promise to keep you in the loop throughout the whole process.

This doesn’t mean anything has slowed down in our day-to-day work on the game; there are still many, many things happening in parallel, such as the finalising of art assets, the rulebook overhaul and loads of playtesting. Our monthly updates will continue, with all the behind-the-curtain details of the game’s development and as many exciting pictures as we can fit in!

Speaking of exciting pictures, let’s take a look at what’s been happening this month…

👀 Wooden Character Pack

This week, we received a full sample of the game’s wooden character pieces. During the campaign, we planned to include 4 character pieces in the base game, but as mentioned previously we’ve decided to increase this to 8 as a thank you for your support. Therefore, the core game will come with 8 character pieces (2 in each player colour), and Hellstone backers will receive an additional 32 characters (8 in each player colour). As you might remember from previous updates, we’ve been testing lots of different printing methods and are very happy that we’ve found a technique that not only allows a wider range of colours but also permits more detailed artwork; quite a challenge on a wooden piece smaller than a penny!

Below is the full set; the 2 leftmost pieces in each colour are the base game pieces; the others are included in the Hellstone pack.

📥 Plastic Organiser Samples

Until now, we’ve been testing 3D printed version of the game’s organiser trays; this is a great initial check of dimensions and component fit, but this week we progressed to the next step - our plastic samples finally arrived!

The trays are vacuum formed. For those of you who are interested in how this process works, you can watch this short video (5 minutes). It’s not specific to board game inserts, but the process is very similar, and it shows the various stages involved in the process.

We’re happy to report that the plastic trays are sturdy, hold all of the components well, have secure snap-close lids and fit nicely in the box:

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice a few things in the GIF above:

The plastic trays are all black: This is just for sampling purposes. The trays will be coloured, with the enemy tray purple to match the enemy dice, the boss trays colour-matched to the boss miniatures and the remaining trays Terraria green, colour-matched to the character dice. The lids will all be transparent. Coloured trays are on their way to us; in the meantime here’s a digital mock-up:

There’s a mysterious white box at the top left: This area will contain a foam block in the core version of the game (so things don’t rattle around); Hellstone backers can replace this foam block with their box of extra wooden character pieces.
The card and biome tile boxes are grey: These are still our 3D printed versions of these boxes. These will be made from full-art, double-walled cardboard in the final game; we are currently waiting on the cardboard samples.
The card box is full of sleeved cards! That’s right; read on for a sleeve-related update…

🃏 Card Sleeves + Sleeved Card Capacity

Hot off the press, we have the physical samples of the full-art action card sleeves included with the Hellstone pledge! They look amazing, are fantastic quality (100-micron thickness) and fit the cards beautifully. We have subjected them to 30 solid minutes of the most brutal smash-shuffling that we could muster, and we’re happy to report they aren’t showing any signs of wear, splitting or peeling.

During the campaign, we said that the insert would only hold sleeved action cards (as these are the sleeves available in the Hellstone pledge). We had some backers ask about space for sleeved mini cards and we said we’d look into it as long as it didn’t alter the overall size of the game box or adversely impact the tray. It was a challenge, but we’ve managed it!

The left image shows the card box holding the game’s cards without sleeves. Foam blocks will be provided to fill the gaps and stop the cards moving around. The middle image shows the card box with sleeved action cards, spread across the 2 action card columns. The right image shows the card box with both sleeved action cards and sleeved mini cards. Square character, armor and minion cards live in their own sections at the front of the card box and should not to be sleeved as this will impair how they work. Once mass manufacturing is underway, we'll provide all of the final card dimensions and quantities for those of your who want to purchase your own sleeves.

You’ll also note from the picture that you’ll get plenty of card dividers (not all of them are shown here); we’ll provide a suggested layout for the card box, but you’ll have the freedom to rearrange it however you see fit. Though it's not shown in the images above, the box also has a lid.

🎨 Character Art + Updated Player Boards

George has just finished up a complete overhaul of our 8 character cards; we’ve worked closely with the Re-Logic team to create an interesting and diverse cast of characters to choose from!

Of course, as you progress through the game, you’ll be overlaying your character with various armour and vanity sets!

Updated Player Boards

In our last update, we mentioned that we’ve updated the player boards to include designated consumable and discard pile areas; we just received the samples and it’s looking great! It definitely helps to have these extra reminders!

🎲 Character and Enemy Dice

We have just approved the samples for the character and enemy dice, with their new, easier to read inlay colours. The marbling looks great, and it’s very satisfying to roll a handful of them in combat!

📝 Development News

Here’s what we’ve been focusing on this month:

The major rulebook overhaul continues; it’s currently with playtesters for initial comments and we’ll publish it for backers to read as soon as it’s ready.
‘Blind’ playtesting is ongoing; the game is currently with playtesting groups who will play the game based solely on the rulebook.
Removal of half blocks for the game to simplify rules; a square is now simply full or empty.
Addition of an ‘objective focus’ token to increase interactivity and planning between players at the start of each turn.
Alternate objectives are currently being tested; these can be swapped in to increase game-to-game variability.
Simplification of enemy retaliation rules; less dice rolling!

👋 We’ll Be Back in April!

We’re looking forward to showing you even more next month. If you have any questions, feel free to drop us an email at hello@paperfortgames.com.