Preview: Minecraft

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I feel kind of depressed after reading these comments and seeing a whole bunch of people describing Minecraft as a 'time sink'. I have never, repeat, never experienced a game that has so much creative potential in it before. You make your own fun in this game - I've built my cliffside mining base, now what? I think I'll build a castle on that hilltop so I can survey the countryside. Hmm, I think I'll need to expand the mines to get all the stone I'll need for the castle. And I'd better build a minecart rollercoaster to ferry the raw materials swiftly to the building site. And I'll divert this river so I have an underground water source beneath the castle. Maybe give it a lava moat too, like it's Bowser's castle or something. Five (real time) days later... now I feel like building a lighthouse off the coast so I can see it at night from my castle tower! And yet it seems that even this kind of unbridled creative freedom isn't enough for some people, because if it doesn't have clearly defined 'objectives' or 'achievements' to grind for, then apparently there is no sense of accomplishment?

When I was a kid, my parents wouldn't let me watch TV for the first eight years of my life; instead, I spent most of my time playing with Lego. Minecraft is pretty much the modern equivalent of that.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

I'll play mine craft when it has friendlies.

It does. Survival Multiplayer.

 

[halkun]

Hey, That's my Enterprise

Nice to see its' still popular!

 

[Explorator Vimes]

Alpha is quite literally the first build out of the gate. A Beta, however, is the last build before it finishes. Usually an Alpha is kept in-house for testing purposes - the unfinished, unpolished version of the software. A Beta is usually always feature-complete, used for testing purposes.

So yeah. Alpha is unfinished, Beta is feature-complete yet unpolished, then.. final build is what you release as a product.

Thanks, makes sense, just hadn't heard of an Alpha build before, I guess because most games don't really get discussed until the Beta phase, at least I don't look too hard at games before that phase anyway.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

hadn't heard of an Alpha build before, I guess because most games don't really get discussed until the Beta phase,

Like I said, Alpha is usually in-house. This is the build before the game is even remotely finished, and quite likely before even a publisher has signed on. Alpha is the bare-bones version of a game that is used, not just for testing, but for building on; the fact you haven't heard of an Alpha (or games before they reach Beta) is because games barely exist at that stage.

The fact Minecraft is so wildly popular, even at this unfinished, in-development stage, that will change radically over the course of 2011, is all but a testament to the staying power of its core gameplay. High-concept, well-executed games like Minecraft don't need bucketloads of polish to be successful. It's Alpha build goes to prove this.

 

[strum4h]

It was definitely worth the 10 euro.

 

[Scout Tactical]

I'm really glad that the Escapist released this review. The fact that it was released this soon after Minecraft's inception really demonstrates how the magazine is always on the cutting edge of gaming phenomena.

To be honest, most people who play Minecraft today probably learned about it through this review (due to its publication before the massive influx of popularity), so it's great the The Escapist is supporting the indie community.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Maybe it was my time with Dwarf Fortress, but I never bothered trying to build above ground buildings. I picked a hill and just started to tunnel down.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

I love Minecraft. I was recently made single and two months ago I had my account locked by choice. For those two months I have been playing Minecraft.

Now it's still an alpha, no real NPCs, no quests or anything because an alpha is for testing the stability of the game world. That's why it's so slim at the moment, Notch is literally getting the world working.

I recently came up with the idea of wooden scaffolding, I'm building a sky castle and when I'm done I'm going to burn away the scaffolding and use a tree plantation on the roof to access the surface world. Literally burning my bridges should stop creepers!

Notch said that he wanted to implement incentive in single-player in the form of a story of some sort.

I hope that it gains an RPG-like mode with quests and all that.