Monday, September 20, 2010

Welcome to the world of minecraft


[direct link]

Perfect fit with the Inception music, because Minecraft feels suspiciously like Limbo. In fact, I'd wager this ends in Tycho entering Gabe's world to tell him it isn't real, and he has to leave.

Meanwhile Minecraft has drawn me in in a way that I never thought a game that makes Duke Nukem look modern could.


[clicky for full size]

Sure, I like my Roguelikes, but with them, it's ALL imagination. When there is already a 3D world for you to look at, I thought it would be distracting. I found that it never really had anything to do with the graphics or lack thereof, because the amount of fun is dictated 100% by the gameplay.

If the game is fun, engaging, and challenging, it doesn't matter that it looks like you made it out of legos.

When you die, and have to make it from your spawn point to your shelter in the dark, you feel afraid.
When you are busying yourself with some task, and you hear the hissing of a creeper behind you, you jump in your chair.
When you dig deeply into the world, busied with your task, and a creepy measure of music plays, the hairs on your arms stand up, and you take a break from the depths and return to the sunlight.
When you stand at the foot of an astonishing randomly generated land feature, you stare.
When your mine breaks into a dark underground cavern, lit only by a small magma pool, you feel the exhilaration of discovery, and the cautious excitement of exploration.

In spite of this game's hilarious graphics, it is tremendously immersive, and that is no small feat when your avatar looks like a stack of ABC blocks.

Could this game's unprecedented popularity herald a return to games that are truly fun, instead of 5 hour $50 polygon eyefucks?

The world is not ready.

But you might be.

PS: as of today, minecraft is free to play, the incredible popularity basically DDoS'ed his server, so he turned off the paid registration. Play now, pay later.

3 comments:

NotClauswitz said...

Interesting game! I'm not much of a gamer and played it until it got dark and I died...

Gudis said...

Damn you ET, I'm hopelessly addicted to this game now. I spend hours mining, and mining, and mining, until I had enough stone to make a spiral staircase to a floating island. And then I mined it.
Now it's a giant castle-tower thing, and it has lava waterfalls. Fuck you ET, I'm never going to be able to do homework again.

NotClauswitz said...

I kept playing, but just walking around not knowing what I was doing or even how to really do anything and getting killed in the dark.
I'm a lamer not a gamer, something doesn't click in my 50+head - one reason I'll never have an iPad.
I tried to run it again and it won't load anymore.