Minecraft

My latest addiction in the world of gaming is the smash internet hit Minecraft. The game is independent, not produced by a major game company. And it is described as a "Sandbox" game which is a word that is new to me, but I interpret as "you are allowed to build what you like" and indeed you can create some remarkable stuff in Minecraft.

The basic premise of the game is that you start out with nothing and have to make everything you need to survive in an empty world. The trouble is, the undead and spiders will spawn every night to come trouble you, so you need to make some safe shelter at least. From there the game is pretty much open to play how you want. The maps are huge, the precious minerals like diamonds and gold are jealously guarded by more monsters deep in the earth. There are rare items to find and build with and you can craft even more interesting objects.

One of the most popular features of minecraft is that you can build complex circuits using a specific item in the game (Redstone Dust) as a wire, coupled with buttons, doors, switches, repeaters, pressure plates, etc. Thes can be very complex and someone even went so far as to create a working computer using input and output.

Minecraft is pretty amazing for having such blocky graphics which at first sight turn a lot of people off, but it's popularity is a testament to its very enjoyable design. Proving the point in the days in which game design companies fight to produce games with the best graphics and leave their gameplay woefully complicated or redundant, that the most important thing for a game is for it to be fun.

Since there's not a lot more to say about this relatively simple game, I decided to include a video to demonstrate the awesomeness: