Minecraft

Minecraft is 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. Its current version is 1.16.3.

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, the player can begin to craft basic things like sticks and tools. By the end of the first day, it's expected that the player has crafted stone tools. During the night, hostile monsters spawn and attack the player once they get too close. Zombies, skeleton archers, large spiders, and more will dominate the outdoors during nighttime if the difficulty is set to anything other than Peaceful, so it's a good idea for the player to find some sort of shelter. Since it's a little too early for a house, their 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.

Throughout the second day, it's advised that the player focuses on building a house for more permanent shelter if they want to live in the area they're in. The most common way players build their houses is with wood since it's abundant, logical, and doesn't look bad like a dirt house. Other players live in the sides of mountains by mining a living space into one. It takes less time to work on than a house, but there are risks that the player could encounter a cave in the mountain, limiting how far they can expand their home. Out in the world, there are villagers who live in villages. The player can decide to travel through the world until they find a village and take a house to live in.

If a player wishes to go to the Nether, a Hell-like dimension in Minecraft, they will need to use a Diamond Pickaxe to mine at least ten blocks of obsidian (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 can stand in and go to the Nether.

In the Nether, there are dangers all around that the player could fall victim to such as zombie pigmen — half-pig, half-zombie monsters who remain passive until the player attacks one of them — 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 mainly optional dimension to traverse through, it still provides the player with many useful items that they should bring with them to other dimension in Minecraft.

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 who are protected by iron bars. It spits 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 multiple 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 goals such as planting seeds, killing all monsters 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 by hitting the J key on their keyboard.

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 an upcoming dungeon crawler game that is set to release on May 26, 2020. It will introduce 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 set in the universe of Minecraft to save villagers. Minecraft Dungeons will also bring new blocks by its release, so let's get especially excited for that!