Minecraft has been taking the indie game scene by storm. Originally released to the public in its raw form during May 2009, Minecraft has been in a continuing state of development over the last couple years. The game was first conceived and developed by Markus “Notch” Persson and it has since moved through the Alpha stage, reaching Beta at the end of 2010. Despite starting as a personal project, Minecraft has seen incredible success and exceeded one million sales on the 12th of January 2011. Thanks to this success Notch has expanded the design team into a small company named Mojang that now works on the Beta version of the game.
Minecraft is a sandbox game set in a world built of textured blocks representing everything from stone to trees, to water. It’s worth stopping for a moment here to point out that while the game is block based (almost everything you deal with in the game takes the form of textured cubes), it can still be quite beautiful. High definition textures and top level graphics aren’t going to found here, but after a while you’ll get used to the cube based world and you may begin to find the rolling hills and vast terrain charming
It is in this block based sandbox world that you find yourself at the beginning of a new game. The player is imbued with three crucial abilities- you can destroy blocks (collecting them in the process), place collected blocks and use blocks to craft new items. After the player builds a crafting bench new items are created by placing mined materials on a three by three grid. For example, a wooden pickaxe (which will allow you to mine stone blocks) can be made by placing a T shaped set of wooden blocks in the grid.
While the game doesn’t have an end goal, you’ll soon find yourself setting your own objectives, the first of which will likely be to dig a shelter underground. Monsters ranging from zombies to skeletons spawn at night and in darkened underground chambers so it becomes crucial to have a safe, well lit home to retreat to. Before long you’ll find your hastily built shelter expanding and suddenly the game becomes about finishing that new room or setting up that new skylight.
The sandbox nature of Minecraft has a powerful grip and it’s easy to spend hours building just one more room or setting up new defences to keep those nasty critters outside. If the building and impressively complex crafting aspects of Minecraft begin to get tired there’s always adventuring. Some of the best resources are deep underground but there are also vast caves and swarms of monsters waiting in the depths. The surface can also offer some exciting travels as the world is procedurally generated and can effectively go on indefinitely. The world also generates biomes- areas with individual environments ranging from temperate to deserts and snow capped mountains. There’s plenty to see and do in the Minecraft world.
For the bravest miners, however, Minecraft has an even more dangerous place to roam- the Nether. The Nether is a hellish realm accessed through portals built by industrious players. The Nether is an unpleasant place to say the least but it also has two neat uses; some materials can only be found there and it acts as a means of fast travel. A short journey in the Nether will cover a long distance in the normal world.
Beyond the deep and personable single player game play Minecraft also has a huge online offering with countless servers running persistent worlds where groups of players work together on vast buildings and construction projects. It can be fascinating just exploring a server and looking at some of the spectacular creations that players have collaborated on. Currently survival mode multiplayer (a mode with player health and enemies active) is still under development but it has recently seen many updates.
Supporting the relaxing feel of Minecraft is a atmospheric soundtrack by C418 that manages to be both laid back and, occasionally, eerie as it kicks in when you’re mining deep underground. Sounds are also reasonably varied, indicating the presence of a particular kind of enemy around the next corner. It would be nice to have some more environmental sounds (and effects) like wind and rain- maybe we will see this in a future update.
Despite the fact that Minecraft is still in Beta the game has a huge following with a strong community of modders offering everything from cartographic tools to map editors. The game is still changing regularly, with new additions being added by Notch and Mojang in each update. We can expect new enemies, new crafting items and more as the game grows. Minecraft is definitely one to keep an eye on and, if you don’t have it already, it’s worth buying during Beta as you’ll get a neat discount along with a chance to see the game grow as it nears its completed form.
