Minecraft is a strange creature. It's a game without any tangible goals -- at least in its current form. Your purpose is to stay alive, explore, and create. The game drops its hard-edged protagonist into a randomly generated 3D world made up of blocky oceans, mountains, trees, beaches, and caves, with no immediate sense of direction or purpose other than to explore this strange land you suddenly find yourself thrust into. Oddly, that alone is enthralling enough to suck you in at first... but the real depth kicks in when it becomes clear that you can shape the world to suit your own imagination.
Different kinds of blocks can be mined through digging, and they accumulate in your inventory. By collecting and placing these blocks in the game world, you can literally tear the landscape apart and rebuild it any way you see fit. Other raw resources are hidden within the world as well. Seeking out these tough-to-find elements and harvesting them lets you craft important tools that are crucial to your continued survival. Minecraft's extreme twist on open-ended sandbox gameplay is wildly absorbing. Like the rabbit hole in Alice's Wonderland, it gets crazier and deeper the further you go. This all sounds interesting on paper, but to get a real sense of the impact this experience has on players -- and why it's generating so much buzz -- you just have to take a deep breath and dive right in. That's what I did, and I didn't come up for air until about a day later.
They Only Come Out At Night
Starting a game of Minecraft is a jarring (but not unpleasant) experience. It's like being born, teleporting down onto the surface of a strange planet, or getting stranded on a massive island. Suddenly, you just exist, with no way back, and you're all alone. Warping in on a sandy shoreline nestled up against a series of hills and valleys, my first instinct was to move to high ground and get my bearings. I scaled a series of grassy plateaus dotted with trees, and soon found myself staring out across an expansive scenic vista. I was immediately struck by a sense of awe and wonder at how a landscape made of crude 3D blocks could still be so beautiful.
The trees, mountains, rivers, and rocky crags stretched as far as my virtual eyes could see, and much further beyond. Aside from a few pixelated critters (cows, pigs, and chickens) basking in the sun in the valley below, no other signs of life caught my eye. I immediately felt small and very much alone. It was the first of many basic emotions the game would unexpectedly draw out of me during my time in this curious world. Then, my survival instincts kicked in.
By the time the sun started to wane for the first time, I had managed to explore a bit and gather some meager resources. I awkwardly punched a cow to death and collected the meat it dropped. I yanked up flowers then threw them away. I ripped apart a few trees to grab some wood. More importantly, I dug out a small shelter in an elevated mountainside and used the blocks from my excavation to build a crude stairway. As the sun finally set and the moon rose in the sky, it grew so dark that I could barely see. Huddled in my alcove, I peered down into the valley below and felt a sense of genuine nervousness. Man, it was REALLY dark, and what were those strange growling sounds coming from nearby? After waiting there and weighing out my options, I mustered a little courage and decided to venture out into the pitch black night. Holy hell, was that a bad idea.
Within a minute or so of fumbling around the dark outside the relative safety of my hand-dug nook, I came face-to-face my own impending doom. I froze in my tracks the second I saw a bounding figure slowly hopping toward me in the moonlight. By the time it was close enough that I could make out its hollow eyes and rotting greenish pixel flesh, it was almost too late. The pogo-zombie-thing growled and then exploded, sending me flying -- and creating a big crater in the ground. It was then that I discovered Minecraft has nocturnal horrors. Awesome. With only a shred of health left, I scrambled up the hillside just in time to narrowly avoid getting skewered by an airborne projectile. I turned around quickly and... "Holy crap, it's a freaking skeleton archer!" Fleeing back to my small cave, I walled myself in and waited. I peeked out just in time to watch in satisfaction as the wandering zombies burst into fire and turned to ash as the daylight returned. I took a deep breath, uttered a few expletives, and got to work.
I spent the following (in-game) week building a small stone fortress along a nearby mountaintop, hiding in it whenever night fell, and venturing out further into the wilds each day. My first "eureka" moment came when I realized combining sticks (made by processing lumber) with a certain type of stone yields torches that could be permanently placed on any surface. This let me illuminate the area around my bunker, and also opened up the ability to venture deep into subterranean mines and underground caves, which is an entirely different Pandora's Box unto itself. That thrilling discovery was soon followed by other moments of glee when I began crafting crucial tools like swords, ladders, armor (made out of meat, no less), axes, and more. As I uncovered additional combinations and produced new crafts, my impact on the world expanded into the construction of island cottages, watery dungeons, boat-laden channels, and more elaborate fortifications. Even so, I only scratched the surface of what the game is (or can be).