I’ve been playing Minecraft. Before you ask me, “What is Minecraft?” ((if you don’t already know)) please observe this video.
Yes. Minecraft is all that. And so much more addictive than is displayed in that video.
I’d heard of this game, from various geek sources especially including this xkcd comic:
So last weekend, on a whim, I downloaded it and started playing. My first experience was exactly as described in the zero punctuation video above. Gee, what am I doing? This is a neat tree. What the heck am I supposed to be doing? It’s cool wandering around. Hey, it’s getting dark out. Kaboom!
I went and checked out a couple of “what to do the first day” tutorials and took off again. This time, I had fun building a nice little hole and tricking it out, waiting out the nights and going out during the day. I had to wander around a bit to find some suitable locations, but that was ok.
Lesson #1 of Minecraft: First thing, get some wood, make a pick, find some coal, make a torch, dig a hole, block the door.
After several minecraft days I was hunky dory with my iron picks and swords, my well-on-its-way-to-being-a-diabolical-underground-lair, and feeling very satisfied with myself. Then I fell off a cliff and died.
Lesson #2 of Minecraft: Always know how to get to your lair from the respawn point. I didn’t so I lost all my stuff, and my cool lair.
Somewhere out there is a nice hole in the ground filled with stuff. I doubt I’ll ever find it again. This picture is my third home, and the very first thing I did was build a ginormous tower and stick torches at the top so I could see it from a long way off. A long way off is important because the Minecraft world is, for all practical purposes, infinite. That’s part of what makes the game so cool.
Minecraft is described as a sandbox game in that you can do or make whatever the heck you want. There’s no “winning” or end goal. There aren’t any bosses or anything else. Despite all that, I’ve found it to be satisfying and fun, digging around in the ground, falling into lava, getting blown up by monsters, taming a pair of wolves, building my ginormous tower, and starting on my secret undersea lair. Good times.
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