Minecraft

June 9, 2009 10:36 PM

Minecraft is a multiplayer block-based sandbox game. It's built in Java, so no installation is required (except for Java). Reddit already has their own server; why don't we?

Via the Indie Games Weblog. Sounds and (apparently) new game modes are coming soon.

posted by archagon (28 comments total)

Another similar game: Infiniminer
posted by archagon at 10:40 PM on June 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Huh. Looks kind of like Sauerbraten, but without the FPS part.
posted by teraflop at 11:15 PM on June 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

I dug down until I hit water and now I'm stuck in an underground lake. Help!
posted by daniel_charms at 11:20 PM on June 9, 2009

Reddit already has their own server; why don't we?

Because MetaFilter has so much goodness that Reddit can never hope to have.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:12 AM on June 10, 2009

I dug down until I hit water and now I'm stuck in an underground lake. Help!

Spacebar to jump up a level,
posted by Sparx at 1:34 AM on June 10, 2009

OK, I've played around with this thing a bit now and I'm frankly slightly disappointed. Maybe it's because the title was misleading - I was hoping that you'd have to mine for gold or other resources to build stuff, but this turned out not to be the case. This game should be called Digcraft (or Digcruft) instead of Minecraft.
posted by daniel_charms at 1:50 AM on June 10, 2009

Okay you can run around and dig for stuff. It's kind of fun but what's the point? It gets boring after a few minutes.
posted by delmoi at 2:55 AM on June 10, 2009

Also, I'm annoyed that the controls are just slightly different from what I'm used to from playing years of quake in the '90s.
posted by delmoi at 2:55 AM on June 10, 2009

I don't care that it's really simple, I'm going to have hours of fun with this just on my own creating places. It's like playing with wooden blocks when you were a kid.

It seems a lot like a simple version of LOVE.
posted by lucidium at 5:02 AM on June 10, 2009

@delmoi It's all about building your own enviroment for example, also you can build in conjunction with others on the multi 'player' servers.
posted by gallagho at 5:07 AM on June 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Let me know when it implements insane, rampaging ex-emperors.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:20 AM on June 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Dear Lord! I hit the "generate a mob" button and then immediately had to build a cement holding cell and bury it in the furthest depths of the island...
posted by Scattercat at 5:44 AM on June 10, 2009

I don't know why I love this so much when it is so unabashedly sandbox-y. Maybe it has something to do with there being pregenerated caves in addition to random surface terrain, which for some reason I was not expecting. And further, it might help that the second cave I found was centered around a lake of lava.

Not sure what purpose my "mob" of one was supposed to serve - but he seemed content enough to roam around climbing the mountains so okay.
posted by doubleozaphod at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2009

It was a surprising rush to break through a wall and enter a massive underground cavern. Who needs to do this in real life?
posted by spamguy at 8:15 AM on June 10, 2009

I'm glad this exists because I wanted to try Infiniminer and now I can see what I (haven't) been missing.
posted by steveminutillo at 8:40 AM on June 10, 2009

so, in case anyone else didn't know it, its 't' to talk.

Any other useful commands that are not listed on the main screen? Is there a help menu or page?

Ugh, and apparently its just a temporary free demo:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/121044061/in-the-spirit-of-the-new-economy
posted by Reverend John at 8:47 AM on June 10, 2009

On further futzing, I find myself wishing I didn't have to do stuff in FPS view. It would be much easier to build triumphant arches and statues to my glory if I didn't have to do it by jump-building all the way up and then carefully hacking away the bits I didn't actually want.
posted by Scattercat at 8:48 AM on June 10, 2009

just signed for this today. its not the fanciest of games, and i dont know if ill pay for it when the time comes for that, but it is strangely satisfying to build stuff. like lucidium said, its just like playing with blocks when you were a kid.
its also fun to flood stuff with the water. i made a whole series of dams and pools. plus, theres underground caverns that you can discover by burrowing deeper.
posted by radcopter at 9:30 AM on June 10, 2009

*signed up*
ups didnt deliver it or anything...
posted by radcopter at 9:30 AM on June 10, 2009

As I am currently reading Journey to the Center of the Earth, I am having fun building a volcano entrance to a huge cave system and dropping mobs in...
This is fun.
posted by MrBobaFett at 10:48 AM on June 10, 2009

gallagho That's pretty sweet, how long did it take you to build that?
posted by MrBobaFett at 10:58 AM on June 10, 2009

Why not just use Sauerbraten? If it seems to complex, you can use Cube. Both are more capable and robust.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:15 AM on June 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

too.

Urgh.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:15 AM on June 10, 2009

Notch was, I believe, the other (and better liked) developer behind http://www.wurmonline.com/. Wurm Online is/was a great game that the remaining developer, Rolf, is fucking up. He sprang PvP on a player base overnight without even bothering to give his unpaid GM staff a heads up.

Of course the was just a policy fuck up. The player base has pretty much accepted his pushing totally untested code live.

http://www.mojang.com/notch/

I believe this is Wurm as he first created it: http://www.wurmonline.com/wom/ Pretty much just an example of allowing terrain modification with no game to speak of.
posted by prak at 1:44 PM on June 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

> Why not just use Sauerbraten? If it seems to complex, you can use Cube. Both are more capable and robust.

Minecraft's randomly generated environments and light atmosphere really appeal to me.
posted by archagon at 5:14 PM on June 10, 2009

Also, I love the fact that the server environments persist.
posted by archagon at 5:17 PM on June 10, 2009

@MrBobaFett Not my work, I should have said. Some of the people building these levels must be more like machines than human.
posted by gallagho at 6:11 AM on June 11, 2009

I've amazed at how well those trees grow for being just over GIANT LAKES OF MAGMA...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2009