Hi guys,

by now, you probably have heard of this new game called Minecraft which has been having a big push of "publicity" recently. I have been playing MC for about 3 weeks now and have also started a "Let's Play" series on this game. If you are curious about it and want to learn more and see it in action, aswell as learning about the basics of the game, then I encourage you to go ahead and watch a bit. You are welcome to post C&C.

Episode 1
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0ya2PNaDk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ml0e_DhP64

Episode 2
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITFfHI4eSJk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss5munIwlAo
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvBBIg0NhIU

Let me know what you think, and/or your opinions and/or screenshots/videos about your minecraft world too!

Wow, best/ most interesting game I've seen in a long time! I couldn't stop watching...
Your videos are well done but I would have liked to see a zombie!

That looks so cool. I'll have to buy it soon. Nice videos. I imagine what I've learned from them will be very helpful when I start with the game, and I found them quite entertaining.

Jibb

Nice videos, i've heard about that video before (and i saw people working on a remake with unity).

But i've never looked too much into it, it kinda sounded boring. But watching your videos, it makes me want to play it too

I think i will get a copy too, its nice they offer it for 50% off when its still alpha.

Can you actually invite people to your worlds? I saw a video before where many people where in one world.

I totally don't get what people like so much about this game. I mean it really has some interesting approaches like being able to "build" stuff by combining certain objects you can gather to create things like doors. I see no point in the game itself though...

I now managed to watch over 10 minutes of the "episode 1" and I'm even questioning the fun in this game more than before. It felt like most of the time was spent to create a nice "home" which just means taking away cubes until the room has a "nice shape". Then you run around the world, get on an island, make a huge pile tower on it, go back and take everything in your "home" away in order to move to the island. WTF!?

That you felt you had to use a fast forward function speaks volumes. I mean people usually moan when there are lots of distances to travel in RPGs and stupid collect quests to solve - this game seems to be made of nothing more than exactly that...

Maybe there's some top secret fun hidden you only get when playing but despite some interesting elements it still looks to me that this game is made of boredom. Is it already the time where I have to say "I'm too old for this"? I hope not!

An Epic Battle it is then for Episode 3!



The game has a Multiplayer mode, in which you can import your own world if you are hosting a server, but currently MP is still very buggy, but also a lot of fun if you do it with friends and/or nice people who are not griefers and try to destroy everything you build



Let me guess You never built sandcastles as a kid or made a pillow fortress, right?

I did - just as I did play with Lego and build a "huge" several m² sized castle made of paperboard packings to crawl through with everything like windows & stuff not speaking of other stuff like doing some work on a model railroad...

I never did that though because a huge green "penis" might hop in the next second in order to explode...

This game focuses too much around actual work in order to be really fun. It's amazing though that the game sucked you into it - I mean not only makes it you work but it even seems it can annoy you with no negative result. At least when looking at the final part of episode 2 (I was curious if anything happens there besides reorganizing cubes under quite an expenditure of time) you stopped your actual "creational work" in order to kill off animals getting on your nerves due to their annoying sounds. I guess that's quite a compliment for the game designer: You make people work rather than play, annoy them and still they play your game...

It might have been really cool when it would just have been about the combination of certain parts and not being first person only (as putting things together would have a better flow when not always being tied to a first person shooter mechanism)...

In all fairness, this first 2 episodes focus on building and mining because I just couldn't decide where I wanted my "base" to be. The real fun begins when you start exploring caves and dungeons deep underground.

Alternatively, I guess your playing style, you can also set the difficulty to peaceful and concentrate fully on building a castle or a giant pyramid.

Press F5 for third person

Watch some other videos, like videos from davidr69yt who also has a minecraft let's play, where there is a lot more action as he is a more combat/adventure oriented player than me.

But anyway, other people have different tastes and there really is no point on my trying to convince you to play Minecraft, if you like it, then you'll get around to play it, if not, then that is your choice

hm... in almost all games you have to do work. mostly extremely boring work actually. i am not much of a gamer anymore but recently out of curiosity i played bioshock a bit and i found it horrible. sure, the story is a bit more interesting than in other shooters and the art deco style was kind of nice but playing it was like being forced to do extremely boring work. go there, look for the key for this door, look for the key for that door, repeat 100 times,... even the original doom was more fun to me. most games bore me to death nowadays.

projects like minecraft look more interesting to me. i think i like playgrounds more than actual games. it kind of makes an unfinished impression though. btw. does anyone know dwarf fortress? it's supposed to be great but it looks a bit intimidating. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ (there also are graphical clients i think.)

Sure some games include tasks that are sort of repetitive or boring. The difference is that those games tell a story, create an atmosphere and things like that. A "playground" is a pretty good description I guess as the game just drops you there and that's it. Not that being able to "build" your own objects (even if most of it is just about poorly textured cubes) is no fun at all. The disadvantage in my opinion is that it puts too much focus on the work needed to achieve that. In the end that's nothing new because games like Sim City, Civilization or Theme Park also had those elements of building things up. In the end there always was this dull feeling where you've reached a point where it pretty much is pointless to go on as you won't get anything more from a gaming perspective but just a bigger / wider / prettier graphical presentation of whatever you've build / done...

The difference to Minecraft in my opinion is that the fun factor which makes you do the work is totally removed leading you to that end point where there's no real point in continuing even faster...


Yes I know it but I didn't make it very far. Its design sort of is related to that of minecraft with way more interaction and the need of reaction though. I've seen some people playing this and it has its charme but it's a hell of complexity in my point of view. You have to know pretty much everything the game offers in order to react right and must get a knowledge of how laying out your world works best...

People also told me that you should scrap any visualisation despite the classic ASCII look. Quite interesting game but just as you I got initimidated pretty soon...