Minecraft.  A whole new place where your dreams become reality.  The future of your world and your avatar depends on you.  Anything you want can happen through crafting and mining.  You can build your dream house, own the pet you’ve always wanted, or go on adventures that include slaying monsters and searching for treasure.  All of these and more are included in the pixelated Minecraft universe.

 Minecraft is an indie sandbox game that is about placing blocks, building structures, and exploring.  Everything is made of blocks of all sizes.  When you spawn into the world, you have nothing but the clothes on your back.  After gathering resources, you can build your own house to protect yourself from the wandering evil forces of the night.  As you get more and more resources, your gaming experience will change, from finding more dirt to patch up that hole in your bedroom, to using an enchanted diamond sword to fend off zombie pigmen and magma cubes from your nether base.  When you have collected enough food, armor, weapons, and potions, you can leave your home in search of an End portal.  This will lead you to the End, a mysterious island where the Ender Dragon lives.  After you kill it, you beat the game, and can later return to your worlds.  To enhance your gaming experience, you can install mods, free downloads that gives you items that aren’t in the game, like potato bombs or dinosaurs. Minecraft can be played by yourself or with your friends, and you can add servers which allow you to play with people all around the world. 

 In the game, you mine items and craft them into something new.  The crafting table is a grid made of 9 blocks, and each item has a unique recipe to craft it, which is really just the layout of the materials on the grid.  You can craft tools, decoration blocks, and other useful items like pistons or anvils.   
   

Graphics are what define Minecraft.  Every other game that appears like it’s made of blocks looks like a replica of Minecraft.  However, many find the graphics confusing and cannot understand how anyone can stare at colored blocks for more than five minutes.  Responding to these comments, the creator of the game said, “A simpler graphics style can really enhance the mystery and sense of adventure of the player.”  Personally I agree with the creator, the graphics give the game a unique look, and also has no blood or gore, so this makes the game appropriate for gamers of all ages. 

 There are currently three versions of Minecraft.  There’s Minecraft PC, Minecraft for Xbox, and Minecraft PE.  Minecraft PC is, for now, the best version of Minecraft with more items and creatures than Xbox and PE.  But the price for PC is a big reason why many don’t buy it.  After the last update, Minecraft PC now costs about $26.  Xbox, costing around $11, has almost as many items as PC.  PE, the version of Minecraft that many gamers look down on, costs about $6 because of the lack of items and creatures.  But the Swedish company Mojang is already working on making it just as good as Minecraft PC.
   

The latest updates to Minecraft have added horses, ocean monuments, rabbits, killer bunnies, End cities, End ships, Chorus trees, frosted ice, dragon heads, spectral arrows, and much more!  Simply imagine what Mojang will add to Minecraft in the future!  This game has received many awards, and has inspired other games like Minecraft Story Mode, a point and click game produced by TellTale Games. 

Many may say things like “Minecraft is for little kids.”  It’s not.  People of all ages can play and have fun.  You can do anything you want, because the only limit is your imagination.


Bibliography
Persson, Markus.  Minecraft. 
www.wired.com/2013/11/minecraft-book/
www.cnet.com/news/markus-notch-persson-the-mind-behind-minecraft-q-a/

?
?