It’s not unheard of for a creative nerd to program a game in their free time. Many remain hidden in the deepest recesses of the internet, undiscovered and unappreciated. Some find their way to popular forums and develop a cult fan base. Very few actually gain recognition from critics and mainstream gamers, and only a handful out of these independently developed titles could be considered an overnight success. But that is just how I would describe Minecraft.
Minecraft has been developed solely by Markus Persson under the pseudonym Notch. This in and of itself is not that spectacular and is actually quite common. However, its Minecraft’s unprecedented success that makes this so surprising. At the start of development Persson invested about $300 into Minecraft and about 90 hours of coding time to get the game into a playable state. For these contributions Minecraft has been purchased 426515 times, meaning that Notch has earned a total $5955002 for his efforts.
What’s more amazing is the fact that Minecraft would not look out of place in a game library from the 90’s. Minecraft sports a blocky graphical style reminiscent of the Nintendo 64 days. The graphics could be a considered a definite con by most gamers, but as you continue to mine and craft the retro visuals become familiar and you soon the blocky mountain ranges look natural and could even be considered beautiful.
Minecraft has no story or clear goal, it just plops you into its randomly generated world with no supplies and challenges you to survive. At first glance this would seem an easy objective, until night falls, and the monsters come out. So you must quickly collect wood and coal to create a shelter and torches. Soon you will find yourself digging deep mineshafts in search of elusive diamond and building expansive castles to demonstrate your dominion over the land. Along the way you’ll find useful ores such as redstone, which can be used to create logic circuits to power automatic doors and mine cart tracks. One enterprising player even created a calculator using the binary inputs of “off” and “on” from redstone torches.
Minecraft is a satisfying and fun experience for those willing to put time into the exploration and construction of their world. You can check out the free and limited classic mode at Minecraft.net.