Minecraft

[Diligence109]

I've included a TL;DR at the bottom for you lazy people. I've also gone to the trouble to write a fuller, interesting-to-read review:

Minecraft is a very interesting, very alternative, online multiplayer indie game developed by the eight employee company, Mojang, but originally designed and developed by Markus Persson (known better by his alias, Notch). The game is dangerously addictive and its nitch community has exploded; the game has already sold over 2 million units.

you could build things like this

The game is easily recognized by it's unique, minimalistic, 8-bit inspired graphics. The world you are set in is essentially a giant 3D lego bin that you are free to explore and rearrange as you see fit. You can "mine" almost any block you see and "craft" whatever you would like out of it. The game has very little objective aside from surviving the hordes of zombies, skeletons, and other various monsters that spawn at night.

There is a crafting system in the game in which you can combine the materials you collect from the world into tools, weapons, armor, food, etc. For example, you cut down a tree and get wood which you can turn into wooden planks. You can build the wooden planks into a crafting table, a block you place that you need to use to craft most of the items in the game. You can turn wooden planks into sticks; then if you combine the sticks with more wooden planks you could make a wooden pick axe and collect stone. Once you have stone you could go back and make a more effective stone pick axe... etc, etc. The crafting in Minecraft goes pretty deep and the unique way everything works (from building doors, minecart tracks, and electronic circuits to baking cake) gives the player an insidiously addicting game to discover.

Penny-Arcade's Gabriel tries Minecraft's crafting system for the first time

All of these things and more are the items you need in order to build a home for yourself in minecraft where you can hold out against the monsters. Muffincat and myself have been building a castle - we cleared out and leveled an aera of the map by digging away a lot of dirt and started a mineshaft. We eventually found some iron ore which me smelted to get iron ingots (I did mention that you have to smelt things as part of the crafting system, didn't I?) which we built into buckets which we used to carry water from a nearby lake into our moat. Once we were safe from monsters because they couldn't cross our moat, we started using all the stone we were mining to build a giant castle on our leveled plot of land... Seeing the work get steadily completed is addictingly rewarding - from the mines getting deeper and larger as we dig them out for resources and the castle continuing to grow in size. Nothing feels better than walking through my completed hallways and stairwells and looking down at all the creatures trapped in the moat from my watch towers and shooting them with my bow (I did mention you could craft weapons, right?)

Penney-Arcade's Gabriel builds a castle of his own

The game is very simple, but it's in that simplicity that it is so addicting and enjoyable. While this kind of game is definitely not for everyone (you wont be getting that surge of adrenline or action-based gameplay you see in other games!) it is largely successful and very fun to play with your friends (that means forum mates)! Minecraft is cool because it's different - if you have any shade of a doubt in your mind that you might enjoy playing it I suggest that you try because, as I was, you will most likely be surprised at how much fun you actually have.

If you buy it now while it's still in beta (you have until November!) you can get it for €14.95 straight from Minecraft.net (that's about $20 for those of us who are more familiar with American dollars than we are pounds). PC Gamer released a Minecraft Demo that you could use to get a quick idea of what the game is like (they give you a free 90 minutes of single player game time). I hope you end of liking it and join Muffin and I on W1CKEDTW1STED's server! We'd be happy to clear you a plot of land inside our moat so you can build a house next to our castle :)


TL;DR - Minecraft is very addicting and it's appearance and gameplay are both very unique. The simple nature of the game is what makes it good and it has a very deep game to discover that keeps it fun and addicting. There is a demo you can try and the game is only $20. Get it and play with Muffincat and I on W1CKEDTW1STED's server!