Why do I love Minecraft?
Simply. It gives me the tools to easily build and walk around structures which were previously confined to my head. I started off, like most people, wondering exactly what the game was about. My first world loaded and was rendered around me in all it’s blocky goodness. I punched a tree, got some logs, turned those logs into wood then started building a house. I made some tools to help me finish my first house quicker and created a mineshaft to look for precious minerals including the elusive diamond deposits.
After finishing my first house I soon began day dreaming about structures I could build. I built a small castle then I built a sky fortress with waterfalls and then I replaced the water with lava. I am still thinking of new things to build and ways to modify old structures to make them more interesting, it’s like having lots of Lego without having to tidy it up.
The recent Halloween update added a new dimension, the nether, which can be entered through portals made from obsidian, one of the hardest materials in the game.
The nether is a foul place filled with lava, blocks which can be permanently set on fire and new enemies if you have the difficulty turned up. The ghasts, a huge flying enemy which shoots fire from its mouth, are quite terrifying especially if you meet a group of them. Each block travelled in the nether translates to eight blocks in the main world so the nether can also be used to travel long distances in the main world.
Finally and most importantly for me is the multi-player aspect of minecraft. It is not yet fully functioning and is missing a few key features from the single-player mode which would make it even better, working minecarts are just one example. That said it is functional enough that people can join a server and collaborate on some truly spectacular projects. I am a big fan of the reddit community and often browse the minecraft subreddit. There is a minecraft server associated with that community on which I have seen some awesome buildings. I hope to collaborate with my friends in the months to come to transform a world into our very own utopia.
Happy mining.