Terraria is a game I've gotten hooked on. If you haven't heard of it, google it. It's pretty good.

The basic premise is you create a little 2d sprite character and drop him in the middle of a (mostly) randomly generated world consisting almost entirely of 2ftx2ft blocks made of various materials. You have a pickaxe and some other tools. There are trees you can harvest for wood, plants that can be turned into potions, and NPCs you can eventually meet to buy supplies you need.

Your first task is to build a house. Cut down every tree in sight, and when you've finished that...

Start digging.

You can take the world apart block by block and reconfigure it as you like, even converting materials you find, such as metal ores, sand, and stone into things like glass, bricks, and ingots that let you craft more and more items.

I've had the game for nearly a month and it's taken 87 hours of my time. I can't tell if I'm just bored, addicted, or am operating under the impression that I have nothing better to do. But since I can reconfigure my artificial world in every conceivable way as long as I'm willing to devote the time to it, and I have swarms of nasty bothersome creatures in my artificial world that are open for wholesale slaughter if I get pissed off, and I can't do any of that out here, well, the choice seems kind of natural lately.


Edit: There are also cute little messages that pop up in the upper left corner of the game window after the game's name. Today's message is "Terraria: The Grass is Greener on This Side"

I giggled.