Terraria devs still had 'unfinished business' that inspired latest update

Terraria town slimes — (Image credit: Re-Logic)

Terraria's developers have a hard time letting go. After a decade of work, Terraria was meant to get its final update in October 2020, which was already a 'just one more thing'-style return after the Journey's End update earlier that year. "For real this time, probably," we wrote about that "final update" at the time.

Well, not quite. Even after Journey's End, Re-Logic's developers weren't feeling quite tapped out.

Re-Logic has been slowly teasing features being added in the Labor of Love update, which is the studio's response to fans who helped Terraria win a Steam award of the same name last year. Terraria's developers have recently been tweeting glimpses of the new features, including a gear loadout system so you can swap between, say, your building gear and your fighting gear.

Labor of Love contains "what could best be described as 'unfinished business'," says Ted Murphy, Re-Logic's head of business strategy.

Murphy says the update wasn't planned until the outpouring of fan love last year, but the Steam Award, along with "ideas that the team has that they feel particularly strong about seeing in-game before development ceases and we focus fully on game two," brought it into being.

"Some of these ideas have been around for a long time, while others came about during the process, and then there have been all of the fantastic fan suggestions. Sometimes, you just know that it’s the right thing to do, and the Labor of Love update completely feels like one of those things that we needed to do before we could feel fully comfortable moving on."

Murphy says that the update name, Labor of Love, really is driving them this time around, with a bigger focus on fan-requested quality-of-life additions than any previous Terraria patch. The developers have posted a few teases of what's coming, including immediate fan favorite town slimes, but Murphy says they're still keeping most of it secret until launch day.

"Personally, we are hyped to see what people make of the oft-rumored latest world seed—the world seed system really has allowed us to create 'games within the game' and whole new ways to expand the adventure with Terraria," he says.

At this point I'm not calling Labor of Love Terraria's final update. I've learned my lesson—you won't be making a fool out of this guy, Re-Logic! And Murphy's making no such claims this time, either.

"Our plans are to shift focus to our second project after Labor of Love... but who's really to say in the end what the future holds," he says. "What we do know is that we think Terraria is as alive and vibrant as it has ever been and we don't see that stopping any time soon."

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).