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Editor's note: Niall chronicles a few minutes of indie game Minecraft, and simultaneously argues that Minecraft pushes the edge of emergent gameplay as much or more than anything out there. I have to play this game now…. -Demian
While waiting for Dan Tabar and Cortex Command to reappear on my indie-game radar, I've had time to check out some other self-made developers. Ever since I came across Minecraft, I've been lurking far below, deep in the forests and caverns of my very own procedurally-generated paradise of adventure. It's an independently-made gem of a browser game, developed by a Swedish gent who goes by the name of Notch (Markus Persson by day), whose dedication I have yet to see matched by any other indie developer — nay, any game developer.
Inspired by the good ideas behind the less-ambitious Infiniminer (from Zachtronics Industries), Persson set out to make a browser version. That didn't take him long, so he apparently just kept on going. At the time of writing he is working constantly on new features and ideas, taking just the right amount of input from the community. Minecraft has grown into something far more impressive than Infiniminer ever was, and is definitely worth the ten Euros it'll set you back if you pre-order.
The best way to explain Minecraft is through the form of a travelogue. Therefore, I present: The Crafty Mine Adventures of Nige!
Now, let's hit the “generate level” button.
Oh yeah, everything in Minecraft looks like this. I was surprised how quickly I got used to it, but not nearly as surprised when I found myself wanting to use words like “beautiful” to describe the landscapes created with it. Like a 1:1000 GTVA Colossus made entirely from Lego blocks, the whole is far more impressive than the sum of its parts.
Anyway, that tower off in the distance looks like a good spot to build my death fortress. Onwards, to adventure!
But first, I'm going to need some tools. Watch, as I punch this tree down to harvest the delicious heartwood core! This is the first task of any canny Minecraft player. Collect wood, craft tools from it. Use wooden tools to gather rock and other materials, use rock to make better tools that can gather iron and so on. It's kind of like a testosterone-fuelled Harvest Moon in this regard, only you don't shear sheep to make clothes, you PUNCH THEIR GODDAMN WOOL OFF.
Scrabbling up the nearest hill, I get a decent view of pastures beyond. No mountain ranges in sight. A shame, since they're my favorite kind of terrain. No matter, we'll just keep on walking and the terrain generator will add more land to the map as we go.
Wielding my newly crafted rock pickaxe and some torches, I reach the foot of the tower, passing through a large, interestingly formed cavern at its base. It looks like some hulking colossus kicked the bottom out from under it, leaving it looking like a gigantic three-legged beast. This is small time, though, compared to some of the incredible formations you'll encounter. I once saw what looked like an 80ft.-high AT-ST Imperial walker made from stone, with a hat of soil and trees.
With no easy route up the tower, I decide to move on. I can see the ocean's edge just ahead and want to find a nice spot before nightfall.
Notch hasn't implemented boats yet, so it looks like a long swim out to that archipelago.
Some interesting sandy formations appear as I swim onwards. Looks like a vulnerable spot, though, so let's keep going.
Oh my. Just as night falls, I find this rather fascinating waterfall, leading underground. I don't want to fall in, so let me just take a peek before hunkering down for the nigh-FUCK
OK, well, I should try and make the most of my situation. I seem to have discovered a flooded underground cave. Placing torches to light the pitch blackness, I carefully move forward.
Notch's water physics are more convincing than the flat oceans above might have led you to believe. Better keep out of the river, don't want to get swept away twice in one night.
Spelunking further downwards, I discover a magma spring! Dynamic lighting means if I follow this, I won't need torches to keep the monsters away (that's right, frigging monsters haunt these tunnels in the dark).
I smash a hole in the ground for the magma to flow through, and find a huge cavern below. I can hear the sound of rushing water some distance away. Let's go and check it out!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! Breaking through a wall a little carelessly caused me to fall into a huge lake of fire. I tried to wade to the pond on the other side, but burned to death mere feet from safety. In my dying moments I hear something ahead of me, over the crackle of my sizzling flesh.
Hiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
I guess death is sometimes a mercy.
Now I respawn, ready for another adventure in the world of Minecraft!
Conclusion
The above documents maybe the first 10-20 minutes of a Minecraft game. I've only shown you a satellite photograph of a crudely-drawn picture of someone pointing in the general direction of the tip of the iceberg.
There's nothing quite like cowering in your tiny log cabin overnight while listening to monsters fighting outside, wishing you hadn't lost your sword and all your torches in that lava flood earlier; riding a mine cart at breakneck speed down into the bowels of the earth, flashing through light and dark areas and flying past underground streams filled with hundreds of lost pigs; completing a month-long building project that connects your self-built villages into one gigantic mining complex with massive, valley-spanning bridges; even just turning the corner and seeing what the game creates for you is potentially a powerfully affecting experience.
I've seen some genuinely unbelievable terrain. Emerging from underground in the middle of a dried-up lake, above the surface of which floats a self-contained island, easily a 100 meters in the air — that made more of an impression on me than many professionally designed game environments.
All I can really do is list things that have happened to me, because the possible stories that can emerge as you play are limitless. This isn't the bullshit of Spore, where everyone experiences the same boring story, just with the main character having a different number of legs or something. It's the kind of storytelling that games like Dwarf Fortress and Sleep Is Death excel at, because it results in a highly individual, beautifully original tale with just a little imagination from the player.
To close, I'd like to see two things as games move forward:
Truly open worlds, where stories tell themselves, unrestricted by a designer's imagination. Games where you're just plonked down somewhere and told to play — not forced into someone else's idea of what is fun.
More goddamn mine carts, they rock shit hardcore.