Have you played Minecraft?

If you've been following gaming news over the summer, you may have heard of Minecraft, the indie hit well on its way to half a million sales, all the more remarkable considering the game has been advertised entirely through word of mouth. Developed by Markus “Notch” Persson in Sweden, Minecraft has exploded from part-time hobby to a profitable business. But just why is it so addictive?

Initially, Minecraft looks simple. It is a world made entirely out of equally sized cubes of that you can break or place, picking them up and then storing them in your inventory. From this basic premise, a sort of “virtual lego blocks” as my friend calls it, surprisingly extensive and deep gameplay can be drawn. The game world in which you play is generated randomly upon creating a new map to play on. The map is huge, having a maximum size of several times the Earth’s surface. In single player mode, you are the only person populating the expanses of valleys, mountains, forests and oceans, and the aim is to survive. To survive it is necessary to both mine and craft.

Players craft by laying out materials in a 2x2 or 3x3 grid in order to make new blocks or tools. One necessary requirement for surviving in the game are torches, which provide light. This is because the game features a dynamic lighting system as well as a day/night cycle. In the dark, monsters appear, and they need to be fended off, either with swords and arrows, or simply with good defences. Tools such as pick-axes and shovels can be created and used to break down blocks faster. But to get iron for the stronger tools, or coal for your torches, it's necessary to mine.

The worlds you generate by mining feature extensive networks of randomly generated caves. These are dark and full of monsters, but also riches such as diamond or gold. While the current multiplayer version is unfinished, the game is constantly being updated, with major fixes and new features pushed out in “Seecret [sic] Friday Updates”. With your friends, you can work together to construct castles and halls, and even fight against each other. The entire world can be harvested (or blown up with TNT, if you so desire).

But if all this “surviving” sounds like hard work, there's the creative mode, which has fewer blocks and fewer restrictions. This version is more like the “virtual lego blocks” described earlier, where you're free to build whatever you like, whether that be a scale reproduction of the German Reichstag or a 3D recreation of a map from Pokémon. More importantly, this version is free and, while less rewarding, it's amazing to see what people can build given the right tools.

Minecraft is available now on www.minecraft.net. The Creative version is free to play, the Alpha version costs a one-off payment of €10 and entitles you to all future upgrades and expansions of the game free of charge.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.