Minecraft 2017

WHAT IS MINECRAFT?

MINECRAFT IS A GAME WHERE YOU DIG (MINE) AND
BUILD (CRAFT) DIFFERENT KINDS OF 3D BLOCKS
WITHIN A LARGE WORLD OF VARYING TERRAINS AND
HABITATS TO EXPLORE.

IN THIS WORLD THE SUN RISES AND SETS AS YOU GO
ABOUT YOUR WORK, GATHERING MATERIALS AND
MAKING TOOLS. THERE IS RAIN AND THE
OCCASIONAL LIGHTNING STORM, AND ANIMALS
THAT YOU CAN TAME, FARM OR USE FOR FOOD.
DEPENDING ON WHICH MODE YOU’RE PLAYING IN,
YOU MIGHT ALSO NEED TO FIGHT FOR YOUR
SURVIVAL AGAINST HUNGER, DANGER AND BAD
GUYS.

Despite the similarity of a world made of simple low-res blocks, the game
really isn’t like playing with online Lego... it’s like building something out of
Lego after you made and moulded the plastic and dyed it with plants that you
grew yourself, and then going on an adventure inside it through forests and
deserts while monsters are chasing you.

If you’re having a hard time understanding what the game's all about, it might
help to think of it less as a game and more as a toy. There aren't a lot of preset
goals or steps to take - what kids do with it is really only limited by their
imaginations. But here's the basic idea of what it's like to play Minecraft....

When you start a game in survival mode, you're standing in a random spot
surrounded by trees, grass, snow, mountains or water. The sun will be in the
sky and you might hear the gentle sounds of animals nearby.

Your first job is to find and punch down a tree to collect wood, which you can
turn into planks to make a crafting table. This allows you to convert your
leftover wood into a pickaxe, so you can start digging down into the ground to
collect coal and cobblestone. Once you have those you can make some torches
and better tools and weapons, which will be very important in protecting you
from the creatures that come out in the night... speaking of which, you need to
hurry and make some kind of shelter before that sun starts to set. That's day
one in your Minecraft world, which is about 10-20 minutes in real time.

The next few days you'll be busy building a more substantial house to protect
you from the monsters, putting together a furnace for smelting, finding sheep
so you can make a bed, crafting tools and weapons, making chests to keep all
your stuff in and securing some kind of food source so you don't die.

After that, now that you're getting good at keeping yourself alive you might
spend some time exploring caves and mining for valuable ores. Or maybe you
love fighting monsters and start building elaborate weapons and traps. You
might even go off on an adventure to find villages and temples and abandoned
mine shafts, or decide to build a city or start a farm. The opportunities and
decisions start to become endless, limited only by your skills and imagination

                                 HOW DO YOU PLAY?

Minecraft is what’s called a sandbox game, where the player
creates the game themselves by manipulating the world within
it (like kids playing in the sand). There are no specific steps or
goals, so everyone playing the game is having a different
experience.

Each time a new game is started it creates a new Minecraft
world. You can have many of these worlds if you want, so that
each time you play you can choose a different one to roam
around in. The worlds are vast and filled with different types of
terrain (biomes) and creatures (mobs), as well as things to
explore like caves and ravines.

Players can also customize the way they experience each world
using a bunch of different options. They can play by themselves
(single player) or with others (multiplayer). There are two
game modes to choose from - creative (where players have an
unlimited number of blocks and items to build with and can't
die) or survival (players must find and build all of the things
they need to avoid death by hunger, injury or attack from
hostile creatures). There are also different levels of difficulty,
each with its own unique features and challenges.

Each time the game is played there might be a different number of
players or combination of mode and difficulty. There are also
unofficial modifications that can be made to the game:

Mods - Bits of code that change the way the standard Minecraft
game looks or acts (e.g. adding new animals or giving a player
more powers).
Resource packs - Groups of image and sound files that change the
way the game looks and feels (e.g. making all the grass purple).
Minecraft is unlike other video games because 'playing the game'
can mean something different to each player. The basic movement
and actions through the game are the same for everyone however,
depending on which platform the game is played (computer, iPad,
iPhone, Xbox or Playstation). Players walk around, jump, dig and
punch things with their hand as they go about their day building,
mining or farming for resources and food, and crafting these into
other useful things like tools and weapons... so they can do some
more building, mining or farming.

And that's pretty much it. Simple, right?