Minecraft is the ultimate success story for indie game developers. It hasn’t even been released yet as a full game and already the creator has become a millionaire from sales of alpha and beta versions. Minecraft doesn’t have a story line. Minecraft doesn’t have action packed missions or strategy game-play. Minecraft doesn’t have photo-realistic graphics. Minecraft is so simple the appeal is almost difficult to explain. Minecraft is like Lego.

In Minecraft you can do whatever the hell you want to do. You can go exploring, zombie hunting, mining, deforesting, pig slaughtering, farming, fishing, building crazy things and more and more as new updates are released. The game revolves mostly around 2 simple things: destroying and placing blocks. Unlimited worlds are generated as you’re walking around. The world consists of blocks (which are generally accepted to be one cubic in-game meter) of various materials such as sand, dirt, stone, wood and more. You go around “harvesting” these blocks, meaning you use a pick-axe to break and get stone, a regular axe to get wood, a shovel for dirt and so on. With these materials you can combine them to make tools or more complex blocks to place back in the world.

You can start to see where the name “Minecraft” comes from. You do a lot of mining to get resources like coal or iron or more rare ones such as redstone or diamond. After getting the right ingredients it’s time to start crafting to make better tools, weapons and devices to use in your world. Pair the openness of building and exploring with multi-player game-play and you’ve got yourself a winner!

I’ve been playing for a while and building stuff, some things more impressive than others. If you want to check out a bunch of screenshots head on over to http://minecraft.rvdbrg.com which I’ll update frequently. If you haven’t played Minecraft yet and this article has peaked your curiosity, head on over to http://minecraft.net and purchase a copy of the game. At the moment it’s still in pre-release and at a discounted price.

Do you have some Minecraft stories you want to share? Stick them in the comments below. Thanks!