I've never been quite so overcome with a compulsion to arrange and stack cubes, as I am today.

I happened to come across Minecraft due to a popular web comic making a joke towards it's addictive and seemingly tedious gameplay. To better understand the joke I looked the game up, and decided it looked ridiculous and couldn't be fun at all. Yet thousands of people were playing it and despite it still being in Beta?

There was only one thing for it, I had to play it to prove myself right, or wrong.

And I was wrong. It is incredibly fun. I was wrong to doubt it, and I was wrong to play it.

The game goes far beyond building structures and landscapes with crudly textured cubes (which is itself quite addictive). There is a 20 minute day/night cycle, 10 minutes of light so you can harvest food, expand your home and gather resources... And 10 minutes of darkness to shelter in fear in the safety of your warmly lit cave/castle/mansion from the evils that creep in the dark of night.

You might start off with blocks of wood and stone, but these can be crafted into tools so you can work more quickly and defend yourself if something creeps into your home. You can build boats, doors, glass and bookshelves to improve your lifestyle and abode.
The game offers you limitless possibilities, yet somehow manages to keep the game simple enough so as not to overburden you with responsibilities. It is the perfect union of simplicity and complexity.

The best way to describe this game is a cross between Tetris and Second Life, with your favourite RPG elements thrown in.

The game is still in development but the developers will let you have it at a knock down price while it's in Beta, with a promise of the full version for free to all that purchase now.

You can download a Windows .exe, a .jar for Linux and it's also available on Mac. But best of all you can just play it in a web browser window!

I love this game, I love the charming and simple graphics, that mask the clever and interesting gameplay.

The only reason I'm not giving it full marks, is so I can give the final release more when it's out.

I can't see myself doing much else in the coming weeks, maybe months. And God help me when it's finally released in full.

My heart is lost to a world of corners, with little love left for Earths round edges.

And that is why, I was wrong to play Minecraft.

These are my friends and this is my home

Discussion Area

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Submit A Benchmark

Welcome. From this page you can submit a personal benchmark to GD. Once approved by GD admin everyone can search for your bench results here. The more results the more we all learn.

How To

Select a Tool in the form to the right, then select a Test. You will see a weblink appear beside your selection. Click this link to get the benchmark Tool. Try NovaBench for an all in one benchmark that is only 12Mb to download.

Run your choosen Benchmark Tool on your PC, using the benchmark tool's default setting. Take a screenshot displaying the benchmark score and information displaying your rig and submit that to us.

Full How-To Guide | Example Screenshot