Minecraft
I decided to take the plunge and actually play Minecraft properly today, rather than just run around without a clue what I am doing. When you start actually playing it properly, it’s quite good, the adventure of exploring and surviving on your wits is really quite fun. Needing to forage for food to heal yourself after you’ve had a fall, fought off some horrid monster or otherwise hurt yourself suddenly becomes apparent after you’ve been playing for a little while, and then you’re thrown into some blind panic trying to work out how to survive long enough to get something to eat. Simple things such as needing light to see adds another dimension when you need to get some more resources, but they are in a pitch black cavern (probably, hopefully) and the only way you can find anything down there is to make torches – which you need coal for, but can’t find up near the entrance of the cavern which means you have to find somewhere else to get some so you can start mining this area.
My first attempt didn’t go very well and I died rather quickly. At first I found myself in the middle of a frozen lake. I found an island with some trees, cut them down for wood, used the wood to build a small shelter as night time rapidly approached. During the night I built axes and pick-axes to make the next days work easier. When daylight returned I trekked out further and found a huge mountain with a large overhang. Underneath the overhang there was a waterfall cascading down from a small cave. It looked like the ideal spot to set up a camp so a swam up the waterfall and began mining out the cave, setting up my workbench, fastening a door to the entrance. After a few nights digging around and playing with various block combinations, I accidentally placed a block over the spring that was supplying the waterfall, drying it up. This proved to be a major problem as the waterfall was my only means of getting up and down to my new home. Stuck at the top, I couldn’t just jump down, so I had to start making some stairways. As night descended I saw the zombies and monsters coming out and so ran and hid, locking the door behind me. This cycle continued until I’d built some rudimentary stairs all the way down the mountain but it took so long to get down and then back up again that half the day was nearly wasted in travel each time I needed to fetch supplies. Eventually, with my slow progress mining out the inside of the mountain and finding little more than coal, so still unable to upgrade any of my tools from wooden ones, I ran out of wood and needed to venture forth for more. It turned out a grey tribe person had decided to colonise the mountain in the day and so whenever I went outside in the day, I was met with arrows in the face and at night, zombies trying to eat my brains. I didn’t stand a chance and got myself murdered and thus ended the adventures of one man slowly hollowing out an entire mountain by himself.
It was a really odd experience and this is just playing it single player. I haven’t yet tried out multi-player mode, but I’ve never been too keen on MMO-type games and I’m still too inept to really be able to survive if anyone takes it upon themselves to destroy me. Besides, there is something compelling about playing a lone person stranded, surviving on whatever meagre resources they can muster against a hostile environment and it’s denizens.
I’m starting up a new game this time. When I spawned, I was near a cave above which was growing several trees. After blocking myself in the entrance to the cave by sealing a section of tunnel off with wooden planks with a lockable door between the inside and the outside, I built a crafting bench and started work on tools. Hopefully there will be some coal nearby to make torches as the cave is pitch black. It might be worth digging above it to add a skylight to aid the initial exploration. The last thing I wan to do is get lost in the dark, alone and unable to find my way out whilst unknown creatures prowl those stony depths.
So yes, I think I can safely say I’m enjoying Minecraft. If you like telling stories and have a love for Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Crusoe, you’ll find yourself enjoying it, just for the story – not the one in the game, there isn’t one – but for the story that you build both in your head and in 8-bit blocks.