Beware, Minecraft is a time siphon. Hours go in and block castles crafted from stone come out. Normally, when some fad indie game suddenly goes popular, it ends up being some obtuse title that’s difficult to really get into, unless you pour hours into getting over some ass learning curve. I held off on buying Minecraft for as long as I could, possibly for that reason or possibly for more shallow graphical preferences. I mean, it sounded neat and I know that it has been around for a long ass time but for some reason, I just didn’t find it appealing enough to try out, until a coworker basically showed me not only exactly what it was, but what could be done within the confines of the game. Since utterly caving in, I haven’t been able to put it down. This game is some serious crack.
Minecraft is part LEGO, part exploring and part survival. You start off in a randomly generated 3D world. Everything within this world is constructed of textured blocks, which are mineable and will yield various resources (mining stone will yield stone and so forth). These resources are used for building things and crafting items. You can use wood to make wooden planks. These wooden planks can be used to build a wooden house or used to craft things like swords, picks, etc. Oh and when evening hits, mobs will spawn from the darkness and try to kill you.
I think that everyone has their own approach to Minecraft; It’s certainly open enough. Some people focus on the exploration, some people stab the zombies and some people (okay most people probably) enjoy it as a giant bucket of LEGO. There is no real goal and no real story other than the one that you create. It’s just, fun to play. If you have some time and $10 it’s well worth a whirl. If I find time I will post my illustrated Minecraft story thus far. I really wish Minecraft had a screenshot key. Pasting images into paint and manually saving them is kind of ghetto, but whatever. PS: This comic makes sense now. Stupid exploding zombies…