Minecraft

A game about placing blocks and going on adventures. Aside from that, players can farm crops, fight evil monsters, hop through dimensions, build structures, explore with their friends, and dig through the underground for valuables. Minecraft takes place in a blocky 3D world with many different biomes for the player to journey through and collect resources from so they can survive. Ever since its publication by Mojang in 2011, Minecraft has received critical acclaim from players and critics alike, becoming the second bestselling video game in history, next only to Tetris. Its current game version is 1.19.3.

Minecraft began as a 3D block-based game by the name of Cave Game created by Markus "Notch" Persson. Inspired by a few other video games, including his own RubyDung, Notch worked on Cave Game without an idea for a solid name to call it by as he first planned it to be a small project. Cave Game, albeit much simpler than the video game giant it would eventually evolve into years later, laid the groundwork for its future form by immediately introducing block placement and destruction mechanics. Blocks were just as quickly removed as they were placed without the particle effects seen in Minecraft. Being a lightweight game at the time, no mobs, day-night cycle, or items existed in Cave Game. On May 17, 2009, Minecraft Classic, an early phase in the game's development, was released. It added on to what Cave Game introduced with new blocks, items, and mobs. Minecraft Classic more strongly resembles the modern-day form of the game with terrain now consisting of hills and lakes.

Vanilla Minecraft
"Vanilla Minecraft" is a term that refers to the most basic way of playing the game: no mods, no additions, no cheats. In vanilla Minecraft, upon world creation, the player starts out at zero. Unless they have a bonus chest — Minecraft's version of a starter kit filled with some essentials for a beginner such as tools, food, and wood — they must first punch trees until they drop wood that falls into the player's inventory. With enough wood and a crafting table, the player can craft basic items like sticks and wooden tools, with the most important tool being the wooden pickaxe required to mine stone. By the end of the first in-game day, it's expected that the player has crafted stone tools. During the night, hostile monsters spawn and attack the player once they get in range. Zombies, skeleton archers, giant spiders, and other creatures of the night will dominate the outdoors if the difficulty is set to anything other than Peaceful, making it a good idea for the player to find some sort of shelter. Since it might be little too early for a house, the player's best bet might be to dig a straight-down hole in the ground and place a dirt block above them so no monsters can hurt them for the night. During this time, they can craft any other important items like a furnace to cook raw food that they might have collected during the day.

Throughout the second day of the player's gameplay, it's advised that they focus on building a house for a more permanent shelter if they want to live in the area they're in. The most common material players build their houses out of is wood. It's abundant, logical, and doesn't look ugly like a house built of dirt. Some players choose to live in mountains by boring a living space into the side of one. It takes less time to work on than a house, but there are risks that a mountain-dwelling player could encounter a cave in or other side of the mountain, limiting how far they can expand their home. Throughout the world's many biomes, there are villagers who live in villages. The player can decide to hike through their world until they spot a village and claim a house to make their new home.

After reaching an advanced-enough point in Minecraft, if a player wishes to go to the Nether, the game's idea of Hell, they will need to use a Diamond Pickaxe to mine at least ten blocks of obsidianundefined (fourteen blocks to build a full frame) to build a frame for a Nether portal. Then they must start a fire in the frame using Flint and Steel to create the actual portal that they must stand in to enter the Nether.

In the Nether, there are dangers all around that the player could fall victim to such as zombified piglins (replacing zombie pigmen) — half-pig, half-zombie monsters who remain passive until the player attacks one of them — omnipresent lava, and treasure-filled Nether fortresses that are home to blazes, wither skeletons, magma cubes, and the occasional overworld Enderman or skeleton. The player should grab a few Blaze Rods from killed blazes if they want to work on potions to give themselves an advantage or their enemies a disadvantage with various effects, like Night Vision or Poison, as well as other ingredients such as Magma Cream dropped by magma cubes. Although the Nether is a partially optional dimension to traverse through, it still provides the player with many useful resources that they should bring with them to the overworld.

The final destination of the game is the End, a plane where Endermen reign under the Ender Dragon, the final boss of Minecraftundefined. The Dragon flies around in the void sky of the End, healing using the nearby End Crystals that stand on towering pillars of obsidian protected by iron bars. It spits explosive fireballs at the player that release the lingering toxic-like Dragon Breath upon collision with the ground and dives from above to crash into the player.

After a likely difficult and lengthy battle, the player deals their last blow to the Dragon, making it die in a cracking Super Explosion and drop several levels' worth of EXP orbs. Before the player returns to their home in the overworld, a long dialogue between two unknown Super Beings talk about the player and their achievement that continues for almost 9 and a half minutesundefined. Essentially, this is an intentionally mind-boggling discussion that Breaks The Fourth Wall and goes on about the player, the actual person who played Minecraft, and how the Universe and the Super Beings love the player.

When the End Poem and credits are over, the player can resume playing Minecraft.

After the game has been completed, the player can decide to fulfill the remaining advancements that they didn't before slaying the Ender Dragon. Advancements, formerly known as achievements, are goals that players can accomplish through actions such as planting seeds, killing every type of monster in the game at least once, and trading with a villager for the first time. There are tougher advancements called challenges that also must be done to 100% Minecraft. A player can view all of their past and unaccomplished advancements.

Mods
Mods are fan-made (therefore unofficial) extensions to Minecraft that can add features such as new blocks, mobs, items, features, and even dimensions, tweak certain rules of the game (how hunger works, how strong mobs are, etc.), or make gameplay more convenient or challenging for the player. There are thousands of mods that have different ways of editing the game. Mods are made for different versions of Minecraft, so a mob made for one version may be too new or outdated to function in earlier or later versions.

Mods aren't to be confused with texture packs, downloads that change and/or enhance Minecraft's aesthetics.

Multiplayer
Two or more players can join each other in one world and play together in Minecraft. For this, they need to share a wifi connection (meaning players locally play together) and enter the world where the other players are. An alternative to local play is a worldwide server, a world where many players can play minigames such as Minecraft's idea of hide-and-seek or PvP battles.

Minecraft Earth
A game for mobile devices, Minecraft Earth, was announced on May 17, 2019. It aims to collide the world of Minecraft with the world of Earth, hence its name. Minecraft Earth uses AR (augmented reality) to spawn blocks and mobs from Minecraft into the real world through the player's phone. In Minecraft Earth, the player must go out into the real world and collect blocks and mobs at certain points in the area around them.

Minecraft Dungeons
Minecraft Dungeons is a dungeon crawler game that was set to release on May 26, 2020. It introduces more mobs to the Minecraft universe for the player to defeat and loot. The player can play by themselves or with up to three friends as they fight their way through dungeons to save villagers.