Minecraft: Manifest Destiny in Block Form

Photos and Review by Chris Mikesell

Minecraft, a game developed by Markus Persson (a.k.a. “Notch”) is quickly becoming the darling of the indie gaming world even though, strictly speaking, it’s still a game in the very loosest sense of the word. As far as sandboxes go, this is about as sandbox as it gets.

chris mikesell / KA LAMAKUA

MINECRAFT

www.minecraft.net

14.95 euros (About $20)

The world of Minecraft is an infinitely-expanding, randomly
generated landscape with six different types of biomes, each
with its own unique ecology, resources, and topography. No
two Minecraft worlds are ever alike. 

The goal of Minecraft is simply to survive, though how you go about it largely depends on what level of survival you are willing to accept.

You want to live in a freshly dug hole in the ground, only venturing out to hunt for food? You can do that in Minecraft. You want to dig deep into the earth and hunt for treasure and resources? You can do that too. Looking to fight monsters? Monsters are as plentiful (at least at night) as you want to make them, ranging from “none” on Minecraft’s “Peaceful” difficulty setting to “OMG OMG OMG there’s a horde of exploding monsters chasing me” in its hardest setting.

The experience you get out of Minecraft depends entirely on what you put into it. Much like the experience one would get playing with LEGOs, the possibilities in Minecraft are limited only by your imagination.

The mechanics are easy to grasp: gather blocks by breaking them, and use the blocks you’ve gathered either to build structures or to craft more effective tools you can use to break more blocks with.

Or armor. Or buckets for carrying lava. Or cakes. The crafting system, while easy to use once you get the hang of it, is not really explained at all in-game. Nor are the monsters, block properties, or even your single main objective to survive (Hint: Torches made from Coal and Charcoal are your best friends on your first day in Minecraft.) The game is still in its beta, but even so, the game will still feel incomplete without any sort of tutorial to guide players along.

chris mikesell / KA LAMAKUA

Minecraft players use the resources they gather to make their
homes as expansive - or deep - as they please, though it's
critical to keep light sources around at all times to prevent
monsters from appearing at night.

Curious (or frustrated) Minecrafters need only to point their browsers to the Minecraft Wiki, however, to learn the intricacies of the game’s building blocks.

The sound direction for the game is as minimalistic as its graphics – the music, by C418, doesn’t blare at you constantly but rather swells up occasionally to add to the dramatic solitude of Minecraft’s blocky world. It’s you against the elements (or blocks, rather) and you’re surviving somehow. You never get over the feeling (playing singleplayer Minecraft, at least, though there are multiplayer servers) that you are alone in the blocky wilderness.

All these elements combined make for gameplay that is simple yet addictive. You can end up losing yourself quite literally in Minecraft’s randomly generated biomes. The first time I played the game nearly two months ago, I signed on and before I knew it, it appeared my clock had gone backwards by half an hour, only to discover upon looking up that it was now night and I had actually lost almost twelve hours of my life to my virgin playthrough.

Though, with a (one-time!) price of 14.95 euros / about $20 for the beta, which includes all future updates, Minecraft may be a habit that those playing subscription-based games like WoW can live with.