Recently, I have been rather taken with a little indie PC game called Minecraft. The game, created solely by a Swedish man named Markus "Notch" Persson and programmed on the Java platform, has netted its creator close to $4 million US dollars as of October 2010.
In an age of graphical prowess and pushing systems to their technical limits, perhaps some people with turn their noses up at this gem of a game. I won't lie but graphically things are pretty crude by today's standards. The premise is simple but surprising addictive. The vast sprawling world within the game is made out of blocks and you must 'mine' these blocks in order to collect the materials to craft items and construct buildings and creations. It's scarily open-ended and for those of you who enjoy clearly defined goals and objectives within computers games, think the Sims, you won't find any such linearity of gameplay here.
In survival mode there are big blocky zombies and spiders that want to murder and eat you and so the first day in Minecraft is charged with a sort of panicky excitement as you carve your way into the side of a mountain to create a shelter before nightfall arrives and the aforementioned creatures begin walking the landscape looking for you. Terrifying stuff.
Once you have constructed your den much of the threat of these enemies fades and you are pretty much free to do what you want. Mine down into the center of the world looking for resources like iron, gold and coal in order to create and craft other items to adorn your den or you can continue to explore the game world which constantly generates as you explore. For all intensive purposes the world is infinite. Although fans of the game suggest that the maximum world size would be somewhere around 8 times the surface of the Earth before the game hits technical difficulties. Impressed yet?
In short, if you like fucking about with lego and you have the mentality of a child you will love minecraft alot. It's essentially a time sink, albeit a very very enjoyable one. The game retails at 10 Euros and can only be purchased through paypal here. Play it build it, love it.
