I recently came across this game the other day after seeing someone playing it on their laptop during a rather dull lecture at uni.
Its pretty cool, even for a game in alpha stages, and Its getting more and more popular across the internet every day. (I mean alpha with already over 60,000 sales?!) It costs $10 euro at the moment. And to make it even more amazing it was all coded by one guy (whos now gone full time indie to finish the game) using Java.
I bet theres a few people here who are into it, if your not then Id suggest checking it out.
The graphics are simple, but it works for the game and the gameplay is so unique that it doesnt matter what it looks like anyway. Im pretty addicted to it at the moment, it reminds me a lot of Harvest Moon and gives that same kind of open ended ‘do whatever you want’ feeling. Also just being able to dig into the ground searching for hidden caves is quite exciting (if not at times a bit claustrophobic). And its such a dynamic game, every map is randomly generated and the size of the game map is apparently larger than the surface of the earth (something like 900 million meters of terrain - and thats just the size, not including the depth of the map and height) or in some cases Ive read that its infinite. Not quite sure.
Anyways I didnt even realize you could ‘craft’ and make things from the minerals you collect until I watched this LP on youtube. So if you havent seen the game before check out this for a brief run though of some of the things u can do in this game, its a good intro:
Just close that down instantly and put down the $10 for minecraft. Manicdigger is just riding the one-man R&D of Notch and not attempting anything new.
Minecraft is one of the most amazing experiences around, and it’s only getting bigger.
I was thinking of buying it but don’t have a creditcard. I also don’t think it would entertain me for long enough, though 10 euro is a really good price for a game like that.
Well, there are regular debit cards, with same functionality as credit cards, but without the whole credit part, or the other amount of ways you can transfer money to paypal.
The game is constantly updated too, so you’ll probably find something new there every time.
That and the whole game is built like a roguelike in terms of randomization, which means endless replayability.
Yeah, I know how awesome it is, I played it for a bit when survivalmode was still free, but that got fairly boring after a while. There is only so much you can do in a sandbox game without goals, despite the whole infinite possibilities thing (as long as you can build it out of cubes).
I just use paypal, you cant really be a serious internet browser/buyer if you dont have it. And lets face it, heaps of stuff (especially indie games) are only available over the internet.
As for minecraft, it would be awesome if the guy making it would increase the depth, I keep reaching the bottom! At one point I even found a spot where the cooled off lava had blocks missing so you could fall though into ‘nowhere’.
But yeh this game has pretty good replay value, Im not so much bored of it yet, but feel like it could get boring after a while, I find it pretty relaxing to play (except when monsters are around) Hopefully some really cool game modes are implemented soon as well.
In fairness, while minecraft does contain many unique and cool things, its quite heavily based on Infiniminer. Notch, the developer, is quite open about this and even ok’d the development of Manic Digger. Having more games in the genre doesn’t really threaten the authenticity of the original (unless its a blatent rip off for cash, which Manic Digger isn’t). If anything it helps expand and explore it more than one game could.
Ever since Minecraft got popular I started noticing an increasing trend of sandbox games set in blocky environments (like Moonforge), it seems like no one is trying for a nice realistic looking sandbox game and giving us blocks instead.
It’s like how games seemed to have took a step backwards in graphics, physics, and overall complexity of interaction as everyone rushed to develop for the iPhone, now some dev. teams making sandbox games are eschewing organic terrain and objects as well as angular freedom in buildings for blockiness that can run on the new touchscreen phones and tablets.
I have nothing against Minecraft itself, but I’m not too keen on the trend it may have started when combined with the iPhone/iPad/Android tablet craze.
Thing is Ace Dragon, it’s a lot easier to construct stuff with blocks than with curves. The difficulty between minecraft and blender is huge. The most complicated one i’ve ever seen is sauerbraten, and that sgetting old.
