PreReview of Minecraft

I am going to start my blogging on a positive note and my current favorite game, Minecraft. I found this title when I was roaming the backwaters of indy gaming online. What I didn't know it was going to take over my brain and life. So it goes, Minecraft is a 1st. person sandbox/survival/autism simulator that really doesn't have any one purpose, other than to be fucking awesome. If you have ever played Infiniminer, you can see the inspiration with the handsome blockyness. Important to note that Minecraft is programmed in java and plays right on any web browser, or you can download an offline client if you prefer.

Let me preface this by saying, at the time of this post the game is still in it's alpha phase and it is incomplete. Since the first day I've started playing it though, it has had more lasting appeal than most commercial titles. There are several modes of play the first of which is the Multiplayer Creative mode which costs nothing, you only need register to jump in. In this mode you can walk around with unlimited blocks (all decorative) and you can block away anything you desire like Legos. A lot of users gravitate towards pixel art as this is the perfect medium. This mode offers nothing other than a multi player sandbox to be creative but seeing what people cook up never ceases to amaze me.

The next mode is the meat and potatos of it all, Survival mode!! This is basically "the game" of it. This has 2 modes Single player and Multi player. In this mode the world generates procedurally and infinitely as you explore distances only limited by your hard drive. It does a really excellent job of generating fairly natural landscape. Everything from cliffs and valleys, streams and islands. Even though it's blocky its still incredibly scenic. At the same time it randomly generates subterranean caves, filled with ore, diamonds, lava streams, springs and the occasional tiny dungeon room. Anywhere that is unlit underground and anywhere at night, all sorts of creatures roam the landscape. From spiders and zombies to "creepers" the sneak up on you and explode which can scare actual shit out of you in real life if your not expecting it.

The hissing means he needs a hug

The point of it? Survival if you please! Any way you see fit. You can chop down trees to gather wood in order to make tools for digging and mining. You need to mine coal, to stoke furnaces and make torches. There are better ores to be had for longer lived tools. You may want to build yourself a house, or a castle? You can still be as creative as you want, however in this mode you have to harvest all the resources and survive the brutal monsters. You could choose to hunt gold and diamonds or try your damndest to find the dungeon rooms what have treasure. Building epic castles or tree houses is a lot more manageable online with your friends. However as of this writing, the multiplayer survival mode is mostly incomplete and has no monsters yet and some entities don't work right. To play the survival modes you have to register and buy the game for 10 euros (a bit over 13$ American) but when the game goes into beta, the price will rise to 15 euro (about 20$) Either way I find that to be a fair price, and I hate paying for things!

I have been following and playing this game for over a year now, and for the last 2 months now almost every week the developer "Notch" Markus Persson, has been really good about adding fun new content on Fridays. I'm always excited to check on it see what kind of new thing there are to find. He has become a bit of a hero to me. He has sold enough copies of this alpha alone to quit his day job and work on Minecraft full time, holy shit right! Keep up the good work, ill do another write up when it goes Beta and Full.

Nanner Q.

http://minecraft.net/