Minecrafting
As you know, I'm not one to complain about wasting time on computers. I celebrate it!
But I have to admit, I've met my match with a fun little game called Minecraft.
The premise of Minecraft is simple; the execution is whatever you want it to be.
Basically, you are a little (very pixely) miner who is dropped down onto an equally pixely piece of land with more or less no instructions (other than how to move and jump). Most of the rest of the specifics come from, er, mining, the many websites and posts devoted to playing the game.
Game is perhaps not the right word, because other than the monsters (creepers and spiders and so forth) that come out at night, you're really not playing against anyone. You can put an instantiation of the game on a shared space, or you can find others playing, and you can chat with them, or join forces, but unless you raid them and take their stuff, you're really not competing with anyone.
The idea is to create a world for yourself. The raw materials are all there: trees, and animals, ore, dirt, stone, fire, and so on. But all of it is in its natural state. It's up to you to find it, gather it, and combine it in ways that allow you to build farms and homes and caverns and harvest animals and wheat and the like.
And you have to do all of this while protecting yourself from the monsters that start to roam at sunset. One of the hardest parts of the game is to get through the first night, which seems to fall awfully quickly. Do yourself a favor, if you play the game, and read up on it before starting. Otherwise, you'll be frustrated, as I was, to get killed over and over again. After each death, you simply "respawn" to start all over again - but you also lose any objects you have found or made!
A couple of friends helped by leaving me some tools to help me get started, otherwise, I might have never gotten past newborn.
Much as I enjoy the game, I'm simply not in it with some people I know, who not only play avidly, but have constructed amazing and complex lairs, complete with flowing lava, skylights, patterned floors, indoor pools, protected fields for wheat and trees, and animals roaming safely behind impenetrable walls. It makes me wonder if I would ever have gotten past the hunter-gatherer stage of development.
If you want to try it, don't say you weren't warned: www.minecraft.net to download the $20 game.
But I have to admit, I've met my match with a fun little game called Minecraft.
The premise of Minecraft is simple; the execution is whatever you want it to be.
Basically, you are a little (very pixely) miner who is dropped down onto an equally pixely piece of land with more or less no instructions (other than how to move and jump). Most of the rest of the specifics come from, er, mining, the many websites and posts devoted to playing the game.
Game is perhaps not the right word, because other than the monsters (creepers and spiders and so forth) that come out at night, you're really not playing against anyone. You can put an instantiation of the game on a shared space, or you can find others playing, and you can chat with them, or join forces, but unless you raid them and take their stuff, you're really not competing with anyone.
The idea is to create a world for yourself. The raw materials are all there: trees, and animals, ore, dirt, stone, fire, and so on. But all of it is in its natural state. It's up to you to find it, gather it, and combine it in ways that allow you to build farms and homes and caverns and harvest animals and wheat and the like.
And you have to do all of this while protecting yourself from the monsters that start to roam at sunset. One of the hardest parts of the game is to get through the first night, which seems to fall awfully quickly. Do yourself a favor, if you play the game, and read up on it before starting. Otherwise, you'll be frustrated, as I was, to get killed over and over again. After each death, you simply "respawn" to start all over again - but you also lose any objects you have found or made!
A couple of friends helped by leaving me some tools to help me get started, otherwise, I might have never gotten past newborn.
Much as I enjoy the game, I'm simply not in it with some people I know, who not only play avidly, but have constructed amazing and complex lairs, complete with flowing lava, skylights, patterned floors, indoor pools, protected fields for wheat and trees, and animals roaming safely behind impenetrable walls. It makes me wonder if I would ever have gotten past the hunter-gatherer stage of development.
If you want to try it, don't say you weren't warned: www.minecraft.net to download the $20 game.
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