Spurious Logic

Caveat Ludor

You magnificent bastard.

You did it. You actually did it.

I cannot express how impressed I am with minecraft. It's like someone read my last post on games and just went ahead and implemented a game that satisfies everything I asked for.

If you want to know why I haven't been posting anything on the game development series, minecraft is why.

It's a stunningly simple premise and as such isn't actually a game yet (there's no way to 'win') but it is the perfect open world sandbox.

Essentially you're dropped in a procedurally generated world made up entirely of blocks. You can dig and build with the blocks (some require tools to work) and using the resources available you can craft tools (pick, hoe, axe, shovel, sword, bow & arrows) and items (doors, glass blocks, chests, furnaces etc...).

The world has a day and night cycle. During the day the farm animals come out to graze and at night come the monsters.

So in your first day you've got to get set to survive the first night by building a shelter. Once you get that done you realise there's nothing stopping you from just digging down, down, down until you hit bedrock (or lava). You'll come across monster infested caves with valuable resources, lava-falls, gigantic caverns just empty.

Basically you can do whatever you want. I spent one day clearing out an entire mountain, filling the gaps with glass so that it looks like a dwarven skyscraper. Going back to that game I was bored and decided to go for a wander...

... 2 minutes later I'm in a valley with an impossible heap of rock suspended above the valley floor by the slenderest of columns. (pic to follow)

It's difficult to express why this game is fun. It shouldn't be. I think the immediate satisfaction of destroying individual blocks combined with the longer timespan of building up your own metropolis is a killer combination. Honestly, I'm reminded of The Game. It's that addictive.

Image by Flickr user tiffa130