I stumbled upon Minecraft, a fantastic little indie game, while scanning the Team Fortress 2 blog a few days ago… and I kid you not, I haven’t played anything else since I started!  Let me give you a clear picture of what it’s like.   You are a three dimensional 8 bit character in a three dimensional 8 bit world.  This world is completely made out of blocks (or cubes) that you can remove and place at your leisure.  In the classic version of the game (which is FREE for all to play!), you have no goal, no time limit, instant removal of blocks, and you can’t die.  It’s basically just giving you a taste of what the game is all about, though the multiplayer portion of the classic game can be quite fun when you have a fellow creative mind to make something with.

Now in the main version of the game (currently in alpha), you have one main goal… survive! Obviously, now you can die from various AI creatures like skeletons, zombies, and even the ever generic giant spider.  These creatures only come out at night, so in order to survive you need to build yourself shelter as quickly as possible using the dirt on the ground, or whatever various materials you find from scavenging about.  This is the meat and potato’s of this game, in my opinion… the feeling of being completely alone, and having to go out to collect food and materials to craft weapons and expand your shelter is immensely fun.

For those of you who didn’t feel like reading all my words, I will summarize… Minecraft is truly a gem of a game and is a must have for fans of the sandbox game genre… it practically defines it!