Minecraft: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Minecraft is something different, something fun, and something extremely addicting. I have played very few games in the last ten years that open my imagination quite like Minecraft.

I am a kid again.

I learned about Minecraft thanks to the Reddit community about two months ago. I gave no due to the game's screenshots: rigid graphics and seemingly crude mechanics. What about concept; what was this game about; what does the player do? Despite browsing forum threads and watching YouTube videos that all had very little in common, I caved into the idea of spending twelve American dollars to buy the "Alpha" software and see what it was about. This is so far the best $12 I have spent all year.

Minecraft begins with a simple concept, yet I cannot choose one word describe the game. "Exploration" is certainly a big part of the game, but so is "crafting," "designing," and "fighting." The first task all new players are given is simple: "survive." Survival is important to the first half-hour of Minecraft, as darkness - both in caves and during all of the night hours - bring monsters about the world that all want to attack and kill the player.

By building a shelter - from whatever materials or natural formations are nearby the player’s starting point - the first couple of days in the game are all about surviving long enough to build better tools, which in turn help to mine better materials, which in turn help to build better shelters and yet better tools. This is a form of character progression that is all-too-familiar for players of World of Warcraft. Rather than questing for loot, however, Minecraft rewards risky exploration and long, monotonous stretches of mining. Hard work pays off in Minecraft.

Minecraft present a huge, randomly generated world that has no practical borders. By day I find great excitement in traveling across the land (although without a map of some sorts, I quickly become lost). By night I have to retreat to my shelters since it it very possible to be overwhelmed by monsters in the dark. There is, however, no more thrill more exciting than traveling across the land and stumbling upon a cave that plunges down into the dark earth. I usually venture into these caves for a bit, and if they look big enough, I set up a small, sheltered camp near the entrance and spend all night exploring the cave, mining minerals, following underground streams, and discovering pockets of magma near the lower levels.

During the day - when I am not exploring - I use my mined material (mostly stone and wood) to build additions to my main shelter, which after playing for two weeks is more of a mini-military base. From the side of a hill I have carved a three-story home base: I have plenty of lighting, two glass balconies, an observation tower, a garden (for growing trees to provide wood), and a vertical mineshaft that I dug - quick access to the lowest levels of the game world, deep underground, to collect rare minerals such as redstone and diamonds.

What Minecraft has turned into for me goes beyond an interest or obsession. Minecraft is a new way to express my creativity. I can build limitless structures, highways, railways, towers, tunnels, boats, carts, and much, much more. In many ways Minecraft is limited only by my imagination, and I expect to spend a lot of my free time in the coming months building a world that is always uniquely mine. This is the kind of creativity that I feel I have been lacking since my early college years, and any game that brings that back out in me is easily worth my $12.

B3 out.