OT: Minecraft

[TCrouch]

Has anybody else gotten hooked on this ridiculous game?

http://www.minecraft.net

It's got horribly bad 16-bit era graphics, but the sheer depth of things you can do is staggering. It goes something like this:

You're thrown into a randomly generated blocky world. Everything is made up of squares. Hills are like pyramids, etc. You have nothing but a fist. In the daytime, you see chickens and cows and sheep and all sorts of fun little things. Then, at night, spiders and ghouls and skeletons spawn anywhere it's dark. If you're caught outside in the dark, you're dead. Period.

So the entire game revolves around a "Castaway" type of gameplay that really has an incredible amount of things you can do. You go knock down a tree or two...then you craft the wood chunks into planks. Drop a few planks in a row and you can make a stick. Combine 2 sticks (one on top of the other in a 3 by 3 grid using a workbench) with 3 planks across the top and you make a wooden pickaxe. Use the pickaxe to break up stone, and then do the same thing as before (3 stone on top of 2 wooden sticks) and now you have a stone pickaxe which takes much longer to break (all tools break from use). Use a stick with a coal on top (which you get by mining stone out of mountains with black chunks in them, signifying coal lodes), and you make torches. Drop torches inside your house for light so that no baddies spawn on top of you (they spawn anywhere it's dark).

Once you have enough resources, you can build anything from small wooden huts (which can catch on fire) to huge, spawling, elaborate stone castles with multiple levels. I actually made one with a moat out on a lake with doors that I could open, and watchtowers I could view the land from at night.

At its core, it's got horrible graphics and simplistic gameplay. But once you dig a bit deeper, it's one of the most amazing games I've ever wrapped my head around, and I'm still figuring stuff out. Building mining cart tracks using 6 wood and an iron ingot, then building the cart itself and a furnace and using what amounts to a powered train that you can ride around (after you lay out the track).

Has anybody else messed with this?

[ScoopBrady]

Sounds interesting. Are you playing Classic or Alpha?

[Naples39]

Yes, I almost posted a nerd alert a few days ago to see if anyone else had played this game.

I got tired of seeing all kinds of references to this on game sites, and tried it out last week.

It's kind of fun. Sometimes I think there's no point and don't know what to do, and other timers I decide to start a building project and between building, finding resources/mining, crafting, I wonder where 2 hours went.

Not sure I get the multiplayer aspect yet though.

I restarted a few times, but I got a cool map and have some idea what I'm doing now. I have a small castle with a massive tower with a glass skywalk connected to a nearby mountain peak. Started messing with other stuff now--have waterfalls running out of the back of my castle, and lava fountains. Also accidentally started a forest fire yesterday, which caused me to discover infinitely burning trees, so I went around and started a bunch of fire cauldrons around the landscape.

I also kind of wussed out and am playing on "peaceful" difficulty at the moment. I like the dynamic of fearing the night and running like hell to your shelter when the sun sets, but I got tired of spending so much of gaming time stuck in a shelter with little or nothing to do. Maybe the night should be shorter or there could be a sleep mode.

Only $10 for you cheapwads and I imagine it will run on just about any PC out there.

If you ook around the nets, you can see some the stuff people build in this game. Completely ridiculous.

[TCrouch]

I'm playing the Alpha, Scoop.

And yeah, Naples--but what I do is build a makeshift wall into a mountain at night and do all of my stone/ore gathering during the night time hours. Then go back out and improve my castle during the daytime. If you hole up somewhere that you can still be productive in, you're never wasting time staring at the night sky.

[RobVarak]

The GWJ crew has been raving about this for awhile. I poked around a bit and read the wiki, but it's all a bit daunting. It's quite amazing what they've been able to build on the GWJ server.

[Naples39]

Fell into a lava pool and died last night, dropping all my items in a place where I couldn't recover them. I have two large chests of supplies at my base, but it is so demoralizing losing your stuff in this game.

[Naples39]

I haven't touched this one in a while, but apparently they added sleep mode and a iOS version is coming. Might get me playing a little bit again.

If nothing else, this game has spawned some pretty entertaining youtube videos.

[Naples39]

I fired this game up for the first time in a long time yesterday. More and more elements keep getting added. It is nice being able to sleep through the night (and change your spawn point), was cool getting caught in a thunderstorm, the geography is more interesting, and the food/health system is pretty crazy.

All in all sometimes it's kind of a nice change of pace from your typical xbox/ps3 type of gaming, just to mellow out and wander around.

[Leadfoot5]

All in all sometimes it's kind of a nice change of pace from your typical xbox/ps3 type of gaming, just to mellow out and wander around.

Agreed. For me, it fits nicely in my current rotation of Driver:SF, Gears3, GP Story, and Tecmo Super Bowl 2012 (Custom ROM)

[ScoopBrady]

pocket version came out for Android recently. I picked it up for my Galaxy Tab and it is a lot of fun. I never played the PC version so it is good enough for me. it is barebones compared to the PC version now but new features will continue to be added just like the PC version.

[JRod]

The Pocket version just seems lame compared to the PC version. I downloaded the free version and was bored. I thought it was more mining and crafting. The PE version has none of that.

Anyone even playing this anymore. Seems like one of those games that you spend a whole bunch of time on at the beginning and then never again.

[WPatrick]

My 8 and 5 year old sons and I are hopelessly addicted to the xbox version of Minecraft. I love the fact that we can all play together with the split screen system.

[fletcher21]

Anyone still playing? I couldn't get into it, but my 7 year old is obsessed. If she's not playing it, she's watching YouTube videos of it. Could be worse.

[pigpen81]

My boys played the Kindle version but my 9 year old is in love with Roblox for the PC and XBOX One and my 7 year old is obsessed with Garden Warfare 2 on the Xbox One.

[fsquid]

my 9 year old has been playing religiously for about 2 years and like yours, she watches youtube clips and even has a book or two on it.