I can't run MineCraft on my computer; I discovered this when I tried to run the free MineCraft Classic application. Unfortunately, MineCraft is written in Java, an interpreted bytecode language which brings my 2GHz 64-bit computer to its knees.
What is MineCraft?
MineCraft is basically "blocks" on the computer. Remember when you were a kid, and you would get your wooden blocks (or plastic bricks) out and build structures out of them, like little houses and buildings, with little roads for your toy cars? Maybe you would integrate other toys, like plastic army men or farm animals or dinosaurs to knock the buildings over. And then your mom made you put your blocks away, because it was time for dinner.
MineCraft is like that, except you don't need to put the blocks away. You shut down your computer, but all of your blocks and structures are where you left them when you come back. Also, you don't just build little houses you view from above, you build full-scale houses you can inhabit, because the blocks are all 1-yard cubes.
Of course, your house can be as big as you want it to be. You are not constrained by how many blocks you can fit in your toybox, or even how many you can purchase, because they are all virtual. If you want more blocks, you can dig them out of the (virtual) ground.
The variety of blocks is wider, too. In the desert or beach, you find blocks of sand. In the plains, blocks of dirt. In the forest, blocks of wood. Underground, blocks of stone. Take blocks of sand, heat them in a furnace, and you have blocks of glass for windows. And there are metals, minerals, fluids, animals, and even monsters; creating an interactive environment.
For architects, the ability to walk through a building without actually constructing the thing out of wood and concrete is new; 40 years ago it couldn't be done. 30 years ago it was very, very expensive and time-consuming. Today, little children are doing this for fun, on Mom's smartphone while killing time at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
MineCraft Stems from Infiniminer
The game MineCraft actually was inspired by an earlier game called Infiniminer, which had explicit objectives along the lines of competing teams of miners. But the creator of MineCraft had plenty of fun just mining and building, as we all did when we played with blocks as kids, and MineCraft is the result.
The touchstone of InfiniMiner has inspired numerous other games very much like MineCraft, such as MineTest.
MineTest
MineTest is written in C++ and compiled into machine code. As a result, it runs more efficiently than MineCraft, and can be played on older, slower computers than MineCraft can. Play is very much like MineCraft, except that MineTest caters to the Do It Yourself hobbyist crowd and allows casual programmers to add fundamental features to the game world via "mods" (software patches which "modify" the game world). As such, the basic MineTest game is much simpler than the feature-rich MineCraft experience.
Voxelands
Voxelands stems from an early branch of MineTest. It is also compiled from C++ source code, and is similarly efficient. Unlike MineTest, Voxelands is intended as a more monolithic game, instead of a framework for modification.
The name may be confusing to some. A "voxel" is a 3-D "volume pixel:" whereas a pixel is a "picture element," or a single irreducible dot from an image; a voxel is a single irreducible unit of volume, typically a cube. Thus, "Voxelands" refers to lands made of voxels. This name is accurate, as these virtual worlds are all largely composed of voxels.
As of this writing, the latest release of Voxelands is version 1409, and it is entirely playable. Version 1410 has not yet released, but promises to include various animals such as deer, wolves, and sharks.
It's Free
Unlike MineCraft, both MineTest and Voxelands are free and open source. If you are curious about the amazingly popular and largely nonviolent gameplay of MineCraft, or you want to find out what this thing is your kids are spending their time on, but you don't want to risk your hard-earned money on it, I encourage you to give Voxelands a try. You have nothing to lose but your nostalgia for playing with blocks, and you have entire (virtual) worlds to gain.
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