This little game runs in a java applet and is strangely compelling. If you try it out, be sure to register an account and go multiplayer, because running around on your own isn’t much fun. I play mainly on the reddit server because they have the neatest stuff, but wouldn’t it be cool if someone hosted an sdmb server?
This is something of a necro, but not really. This game is pretty awesome. It’s in Alpha right now, and they’re charging 10 bucks – the guy’s already sold something a hundred thousand/a million/ten trillion copies, depending on which source you believe.
They’ve made some real, interesting game choices and if you can get over the bad graphics (which kind of grow on you, honestly), it’s a really, really cool game that involves Crafting, Resource Gathering, Mob Fights, Building a Home, etc.
I bought this the other day after all the hype and it’s way too sandbox. After an hour you’ve seen everything it has to offer and will get bored unless you want to awkwardly play LEGO.
I completely disagree.
First, the world is generated in real time. You try going Spelunking at night with monsters trying to eat you.
It’s pretty easy to just survive, make a cave with a door and block it off/put a door, and you’re good to go. But, try building a house, or a castle (with a Lava Moat) with the Mobs on. It gets much more difficult.
Second, the game is incomplete. There are other modes being added frequently, try the infdev and indev versions (if you’ve purchased the game), they’re significantly different than the “Arcade” version, or whatever the free one is.
I tried the single player survival and non-survival multilayer. Mobs just aren’t much of a threat since it takes like five minutes to get decked out in iron equipment or two minutes for adequate stone equipment.
In a few months when the game is a randomly-generated Harvest Moon or where ever it is going, it’ll probably be awesome. I think it’s fair to warn people that there isn’t a whole lot going on right now.
I’m sort of keeping an eye on this one since I read part of a (typically long) gaming forum thread over at Giant in the Playground. I like the You Tube video about Minas Tirath, even if I don’t get the point of it.
I really should have updated this last weekend, when it was free to download and play. Dang.
This game is immensely fun, even in just the single player version.
So wait, I’m confused: if I wanted to play whatever Penny Arcade liked, is that the paid subscription multiplayer? Or the classic singleplayer one I can play for free?
You pay for the alpha version, which is what has crafting in single-player and multiplayer. The free version is just a build mode without the fun stuff. It isn’t subscription though. Just a one-time fee.
When you pay for the game (or pirate it, it’s certainly happening a lot) you get access to the multiplayer, as well as the Alpha game, which is also known as Single Player Survival.
Work during the day, build, craft, and monsters come out at night. Or in the caverns. Or in tunnels. Or hiding under trees.
ssssssssssss…
I’ve been playing this game, and I like it a lot. Though I sort of messed up my first world a bit so I was thinking of restarting. It’s not necessarily that I messed up terribly so much as I never did anything exciting (no exploring or anything) but I’ve gotten far enough that the game is a little too safe now. Everywhere I want to go it protected. I also built my house in a location that doesn’t seem to be near enough to any natural caves so I’ve been mining… and mining… and mining… with little to show for it since random digging seems to yield very little resources compared to finding caves.
I guess that’s what happens when you build your first shelter in the middle of a field instead of a cave (there were no caves near my spawn so I had to make due because it was getting dark and I still hadn’t found any caves).
I’ve also been watching this Let’s Play of it
You wouldn’t think a game as simple and sandbox as Minecraft would be fun to watch, yet somehow it is. Watching this play-through and comparing it to my experiences makes it painfully clear that Minecraft is very much what you make of it though. If you don’t go out and explore for resources, and you don’t push your limits a little bit (“oh… I can make it back, let’s mine a little more!”) or wander off aimlessly and get lost the game probably won’t be that exciting. I’m not advocating leaving torches out of your mines so that creatures spawn, or not using diamond in order to gimp yourself and make it harder, but it’s become fairly clear that if you don’t do exciting things the game, well, won’t be that exciting.
This game looks very neat if a bit tedious. When you play multiplayer is there anything to keep other players from just destroying what you’ve built? Is there player vs player and if so is there any way to get an advantage over other players? How big is the game world/map/whatever? A town, city, county? Bigger?
Much bigger.
There are griefers, a big part of the “metagame” (if you can say this game has one) involves griefer-proofing. It’s always possible to get your stuff ransacked by somebody placing a few squares of TNT, dropping lava into your house, or intentionally mining in a way that floods everything. All of these have counters to at least some degree, though many of them require sacrificing aesthetics (for instance, wood is flammable. Your pretty log inn could pretty easily be sacrificed by fire by any random griefer). However, if you play on a server with a whitelist this danger is significantly lowered, though it still happens on occasion.
There isn’t PvP as of now, perhaps when Survival Multiplayer gets implemented there will be a semblance of FFA PvP, but as of now I think in multi everyone has infinite health. There are some “games” that people have made up, such as spleef, but those are all honor-system games about making people fall and such.
The game is infinitely large, it’s procedurally generated and loaded in “chunks.” That means that as soon as you get out of an area it will be unloaded (provided nobody else is there) and more will be created/loaded. The world can, theoretically, be larger than the earth itself, though that would take more walking than most people would care to do, and would probably take up enough space (I think it was estimated at 1TB) that it would be infeasable.
There are SOME boundaries, for instance if you dig too far down you eventually hit “bedrock” (also known as “adminium” because server admins use it to block off areas they don’t want accesses) which is indestructible. There’s probably also a skybox though I haven’t heard of anyone hitting it.
There’s definitely a skybox. Take four stacks of 64 anything, jump and place at then same time, you hit it by the end of the fourth stack iirc. Maybe sooner.
Thanks guys. That’s pretty cool. Just wish there was more to do other than hit stuff and build stuff. I wanna wage war or something.
You can (in single player) theoretically make a castle with a mob generator (any unlit room), evacuate, and you’ve got yourself a dungeon. The biggest issue is that you know the layout yourself, though I’m sure people have pre-made dungeons for you to download either on the official forums or elsewhere. If you want to use a save editor there’s also a block called a “mob spawner” you can add to your inventory which will spawn baddies for you that you can use to fuel the same thing.
I’ve heard that castle wars (walls and cannons) are possible, but a little difficult to pull off since at least one of the castles has to be built with intention, and even then, it’s 100% honor system, it’s often done with Phase 1: breaking walls and gates, Phase 2: Capture the flag where the only real defense is making impassable terrain, making your castle sufficiently labyrinthine, or building faster than the enemy mines.
When beta hits I hear Notch is planning on adding some CTF and Castle Siege modes pre-built to the game, but I’m not certain about that.
So I’m playing my first game right now, and I’m curious: what am I supposed to do if I can’t find coal? It doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the surface, so should I mine deeper (which I’m wary to do 'cause I don’t wanna spawn a monster) or keep looking on the surface?
Also, what should I do on the nights when I get stuck without a torch as it’s getting dark? One the first night I just excavated a 1x2 hole, plugged the other side with stone blocks and waited, and that seemed to work okay.
Hmm… I’ve had this happen in my game, I basically just wander until I find some surface coal. By laws of statistics you’ll hit some eventually. If you’re too far from your spawn point when searching for coal I’d recommend mining the coal and making a temporary shelter for the night.
If you get caught out in the middle of nowhere I’d make something like this:
|||
- = stone, wood, whatever
|||| = open space
Basically, three blocks of open space with a “gate” at the bottom and top so mobs can’t get in.
Then after you dig one two spaces or so back dig a one or two spaces to the side. This is important because Skelly Archers will EAT YOUR FACE if you leave a space open, so you need a spot to be able to duck to the side. Don’t worry about mobs spawning in your tiny fort if it’s dark, if you don’t expand it too much they shouldn’t. I’m fairly certain that mobs only spawn out of your LOS, so you can safely stand in the corner until morning being no worse for the wear.
If you get caught near absolutely nothing to dig into it can be a tad more difficult, You could easily do what I did on my first game though, which is make a small “house” (two-four blocks high) with no ceiling. It is imperative that there be no hills around though, otherwise you can get sniped or jumped on by spiders. Alternatively, you can dig a hole and fill in a ceiling, but I don’t like this option because then you can’t tell when it’s day.
Well, I found some coal- thanks for the feedback! I ended up doing something quite close to what you recommended, but a bit more severe. My emergency shelter basically looked like
=
Where = is the mountainside and * was my guy. I basically dug 2 squares in, stood on the deeper square and filled the shallower one with 2 cubes. You’re right that this made it somewhat harder, but I just manually pickaxed it down every so often to check if it was daytime yet.
Sooo, what am I supposed to do now? I have all the stone tools I could want, and I’m starting to get enough iron to make decent armor. Is there anything else I have to do to guarantee my survival/progress, or is it all sandbox architecture/mining stuff at this point?