Pong and Beyond

525th played so far

Genre: Simulation
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2011
Developer: Mojang
Publisher: Mojang

Minecraft must be one of the biggest game success stories of the past decade, responsible for the success of many streams and streaming sites, as well as the rise of Mojang and all that that entails.

We’ve played around with it before – before the list update that actually made it one of the 1001 games – and enjoyed it, just not to the extend as others. This time we really get to jump in.

Our Thoughts

I’ll be honest, I’ve been staring at this post for a while without knowing where to start. Minecraft can be so many things for different people that it’s difficult to see where to start. I hope I can cover the basics now going through the game. And I assume I don’t have to explain what the game is…

Not related as much to a specific mode, but probably the most recognisable element of the game, are the graphics. They’re blocky and pixelly, a necessity for what it’s trying to do, but I must admit it got difficult at times to know and see what’s what – it was mostly just hoping it was useful.

But then, exploration and discovery is a major part of the game. While the achievements give you some guidance, you need to work out on your own what most crafting recipes are. There’s some satisfaction in figuring out what they are, but mostly we turned to the wiki to figure it out.

Then the first step is to use these tools to set up a safe place – usually a simple house, a few walls, torches and so on. At night fiends spawn (unless you’re playing peaceful) and while you can kill them, avoidance is a good thing. Playing with that on, especially at high, makes it a game of survival. You have to get food, be in a safe place, and survive in this blocky world.

Your other option, and one you need to take in this situation, but also when you play more peaceful, is exploration. There are really two options here – out and down. Digging down gets you to rarer and more special blocks, allowing tougher tools and weapons and weirder creations, some that can be used to program or do other things. There are mines hidden in the mountains, and the continuation of ‘story mode’ – a way to get to another world where you can kill the big creeper.

The other way is to go out. While there are plenty of mountains, the Minecraft world is divided in biomes with far more diversity than that. Some distance from our starting point, we found a deep gorge, for example, with creatures roaming the bottom. We had to create our own stairs to get down and explore though, and ended up in one of the mines discussed earlier – while also gathering rubies and sapphires. Aside from oceans, there are villages and NPCs to find (although we didn’t). We did this for a while, got lost, and only made our way back through some debug tools, a nice exploration that we could continue.

But then there’s the other part, that made Minecraft and its streams famous, and the thing that we only vaguely did: creating things. I must say I didn’t always have the patience to figure it out, but there are some truely impressive things you can do with it. Not just in looks, but there are electric systems and the like that can create impressive movements. And man, it was tempting to keep expanding the house we had built.

Final Thoughts

Minecraft is a phenomenon. I might not have been quite as taken in with it as some, but yeah, personally I’d love to explore further and deeper, finding out more about what’s there to find…