Minecraft Walkthrough and Guide

Minecraft is a sandbox game. Like its real world counterpart, sandbox in the world of video games is all about freedom. You are given the freedom to take the path you want to take. This freedom may be limited, but is far less constricting than your usual rule-heavy / script-adhering video game. Sandbox (or open world) games breaks the linearity by disallowing a certain path or a limited number of paths to be the only way to progress.

Most of the famous open-world games like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed still rely on its script / narrative. You can go around their worlds and explore, but still, the end-game is to follow an established path. These paths may fork, there may be options, but the different paths are still parallel to each other and in one way or the other, will have to crash against each other, there is only one ending.

Minecraft is not this way.

Minecraft is all about world building, the entire game world is the player's resources. There are obstacles, other than the limitation of a player's imagination, like Mobs. During the night, the most hostile and dangerous mobs come out and attack the player. This is not entirely basing on the time of the day though, as the mobs thrives in the darkness, and fears the light.

Creator

Minecraft is as famous as its creator, "Notch". Markus "Notch" Persson is a Swedish video game creator. He founded Mojang with two of his peers. Notch is a former employee of King.com and left the company to work full time on the development of Minecraft.

Notch’s first encounter with a computer was when he was seven years old, when his father bought a Commodore 128. A year later, Notch was able to create his own program, fitting that it is a video game. He managed to write and create a text adventure where you have to choose the correct answer in order to move on to the next room.

Notch also worked in other projects, he was one of the founders of Wurm Online. He also ventured in to non-gaming programming gigs like his work in Jalbum, a shareware cross-platform photo sharing service. In September 2014, Notch left his own company Mojang, after it was acquired by Microsoft.

Versions

PC version

The PC version is definitely the best version of Minecraft. PC gaming is all about modding, hence Minecraft finds its home right here. The PC version covers all versions that run on major desktop operating systems: Microsoft Windows, OS X, and most flavors of Linux.

There is a free version of Minecraft named Minecraft classic. It is the non-updated version of the game, and there are no actual dangers in the game as there are no Mobs and the usually dangerous terrains do not hurt the player. In short, Minecraft Classic is like the creative mode of the game, you are free to build and navigate, but will not experience what Minecraft is supposed to be. Indeed, a glorified demo.

The PC version is open for modding, and skins are usually free to download on Minecraft community websites. This version is priced at $26.95 USD (€19.95/£17.95), a one-time purchase. Technically, Minecraft itself is not finished yet and should still receive updates knowing that the game still sells until now, topping the charts, several years later after its “release”.

The PC version is lightyears ahead of the other versions in terms of updates. The PC version has the most Biomes, the most creatures, and the most features, years ahead of the console versions. There is only one “advancement” though that the console version of the game offers that the PC version was late to adapt: the advanced mechanics of the Ender Dragon.

Home Console Versions

The home console versions may be the best selling version of the game, in terms of revenue. Skin packs, maps, resource packs, among others are for sale. Usually, these items are released by modders in the PC platform as free to download, modify, and / or share.

There are two different builds of Minecraft in the home console versions: Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 build and the Xbox One / PlayStation 4 build. Both builds have the same core features, content, and gameplay. There are only slight difference in controls due to the new hardware and control scheme. The biggest difference between the previous generation and the current generation builds are the size of the map (now 32 time bigger), additional achievements, better graphics, and better under the hood performance. Both builds gets updated simultaneously.

The difference between the Xbox 360 / Xbox One and PlayStation 3 / PlayStation 4 versions of Minecraft are the add-ons like skins. Most of the times the skin packs arrive at the Xbox family first and later on to the PlayStation platforms. There are exclusive skins for both consoles though, like Halo Skins for Xbox and Uncharted for the PlayStation. It is worth noting that the PlayStation Vita edition of Minecraft is based on the Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 build, not the Minecraft Pocket Edition.

Pocket Edition

The mobile build of Minecraft is called Minecraft: Pocket Edition. This build was originally launched as exclusive for the Xperia PLAY for a price of 6.99 on the 16th of August 2011. This build was later released on other Android devices on the 7th of October 2011 and on the iOS on the 17th of November 2011. The game then became available on the 13th of September 2012 in Amazon AppStore, and then on the 2nd of April 2014 for the Amazon Fire TV. On the 10th of December 2014, the Windows Phone version was released for the Windows Phone platform.

This edition is the most “gimped” because of the very nature of the hardware it runs. There is no hunger system, nor brewing, as well as bosses and other dimensions. There are also lots of revisions both in gameplay, content, and controls to accommodate the platform. Still, this edition of Minecraft does run multiplayer sessions, and surprisingly has more vibrant graphics and animation than the other versions.

All of the information available in this guide are based on the PC version on Minecraft. There are lots of things included here that is not currently available in both the home console and the Pocket Edition of Minecraft.