Minecraft
| Developer: Mojang | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Mojang | Sound: |
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| Year: 2011* | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Sandbox | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: Nineteen to the dozen | Rating: |
8/10 | |
(*) The game was available in its alpha version as early as 2009. This article was written in 2012, before the acquisition of Mojan studio by Microsoft in 2014.
If there’s one game that a notorious fan of Boulder Dash like me, who’s also a die-hard fan of retro 3D, simply couldn’t ignore, it was Minecraft!
A nearly infinite terrain is randomly generated, on which you can pretty much do anything: chop wood, carve stone, build a house, dig holes in search of diamonds (that’s for me), lay down railways, explore the surroundings, get lost, die devoured by zombies, raise sheep, pick flowers, bake a cake, ride a pig, drown small animals, blow them up with TNT … and more, so much more!
You’ve probably noticed from the images—the cube-based graphics style is minimalist, not just for retro flair, but to display as many as possible: as far as the eye can see! And when you’ve had enough of flatlands, grab a pickaxe and visit the depths of the earth to take a dip in lava, or conversely, build a majestic tower to flirt with the clouds (and maybe install a diving board at the top). The watchword here is “freedom”!
And the second would be “buggy”:
Between the difficulties to connect in multiplayer, save glitches, disappearing items, geographic incongruities (bottomless pits when a “block” doesn’t load) or metaphysical ones (only those who’ve witnessed squids raining from the sky will know what I’m talking about), and so on and so forth. You often quit the game in a fit of rage, give it the silent treatment for a while … but sooner or later, you come back to this giant sandbox, with the enthusiasm of the child you never stopped being!
There is only one thing missing from Minecraft: an Emerald Mine mode populated with yams! 
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