Mojang and game designer Markus “Notch” Persson are basically famous now after Minecraft hit it big on PC and spread like wildfire. For gamers who never got around to trying it out on PC, the sandbox game to end all sandbox games has hit Xbox Live Arcade. Does this game capture the greatness that made the PC version so popular or does the transition to console ruin the experience?

To call Minecraft a sandbox is doing it a disservice. When you think about sandbox games you start thinking about Grand Theft Auto or Just Cause 2. Minecraft is an entirely different breed of gameplay. The game is perhaps best described right from the two words that make up its title: you mine for things and you craft things.

The point of Minecraft is about as simple as it gets. You are dropped in a world with nothing and are let loose to do what you desire. There is only one catch: at night monsters come out so you need to get started on building some type of shelter to create a safe, well-lit environment in order to survive the night. After that, the world is yours to explore and do whatever you want.

The first thing your build isn’t that cool, but it gets the job done.

The simplicity of the game is mirrored in its design. The entire world is made up of large blocks, whether it be a mountain or a house they all are just a bunch of cubes. The graphics are all 8-bit style textures which is both rudimentary and endearing. Similarly all characters, animals and monsters have basic, blocky designs. The music is low-key and haunting and sound effects are minimal and pretty basic, containing familiar moos of cows and moans of zombies.

In order to do anything in Minecraft you’ll need to progress. You start out with literally your bare hands and slowly work your way towards advancing both in technology and resources. Bare hands give way to wooden tools. With wooden tools you can start to mine stone which advances you to stone tools and so on. The same progression is seen outside of just your tools. What might start as a small wood shack to live in may turn into a giant stone castle or a cozy brick cottage.

However with some work you can definitely make some impressive things.

To do any of this, you will need to mine, but you probably guessed that. The deeper you dig the more precious materials you will find and there is plenty to find. Digging into the earth will uncover rich materials like diamonds and gold as well as helpful materials like coal. Like a true mine these items are scattered throughout and you will find small pockets as you dig. You might get all the way down to bedrock (the bottom of the playable world) and find nothing. You might dig two blocks and uncover a massive network of caves that will take days to fully explore.

Minecraft is, at its base, a game that is about creativity, exploration and discovery. There are moments in the game that can be downright jaw-dropping, like the first time you discover a giant cavern or your first experience with lava. As you dig down deeper and travel farther you will find more and more interesting things. You might start in a wooded area but travel a ways and you might run into a winter wonderland or a barren desert.

Environments range from snowy mountains to flat plains.

The second part of what makes Minecraft great is building things. Everything in the world is based on simple building blocks and combining items to make better things is required to progress. The simpler things have you taking a stick and some stone and making an axe. More complicated processes may see you turning sugarcane into paper, making a book out of the paper and then building a bookcase out of several books and wood.

The system of creating items is much more streamlined on Xbox than it was on PC. On PC you had to take items and arrange them in a certain order to make the item. This “recipe” was something most PC players had to look up online or experiment with to figure out. The Xbox version lays out all recipes for you, telling you what materials you need to build anything in the game right up front. This is incredibly helpful and I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Just when you think you’re having a fun time building stuff, the creeper appears and blows it up.

Aside from creating new materials by combining items, Minecraft also has a heavy building aspect. The world is held together through blocks and it is easy to create cool looking stuff by sticking blocks together LEGO style. Due to it’s simplicity it is incredibly easy to design and build something that looks cool. If you put your back into it you can even create amazing things that tower over your world.

One of the most amazing parts of Minecraft is the fact that it isn’t just a single player game. You can play local split-screen or play online with up to eight other players. This means you can easily invite your friends over to your world to see what you’ve built or start a brand new game with someone and build together. Just make sure you trust the people you let in your world because anything that can be built can also be destroyed.

One big advantage the XBLA version has over the PC version is the ability to play split screen.

The last aspect of Minecraft, and perhaps the least compelling, is the aforementioned monsters. There are a variety of enemies who come out at night and also can spawn anywhere it’s dark. Often times while exploring a cave you will run into these creatures and in order to take them out you can make simple weapons like a sword or bow and arrow to kill them. Similarly they can kill you. Combat is fine although in the early parts of the game restoring health can be difficult. Still the monsters definitely have a place in the game; it creates tension to know that you may run into enemies underground. Luckily if you want to explore and create without worry of dying there is a “Peaceful” mode that eliminates all bad guys from the world.

Ultimately there is only one complaint I can throw against Minecraft: it’s buggy. For some reason the game seems to exist online, even when playing single player, and there have been multiple times where I have lost connection to the server and lost work. There is also no quick-save, meaning that you will need to remember to manually save every now and then. There are also times when the game crashes and you have to reboot your Xbox. Sadly, the worst case scenario for any game actually happened to me where I lost an entire game save and had to start over after 16 hours of play.

I didn’t build this but it’s an example of what people have done on PC using Creative Mode.

Luckily for all of these bug issues, Minecraft on Xbox 360 is a work in progress. The XBLA release is Minecraft Beta 1.6, while PC players are currently enjoying version 1.2.5 of the full release, which includes a vast amount of new systems. Most notable is the lack of Creative Mode, which lets you just build to your heart’s content without worrying about mining. However it has been promised that patches and updates will continue to come to the Xbox version for free, which is exciting news for console players. The game has already received seamless patches that appear to have made it much more stable that it was at launch.

Minecraft is a game that is both an amazing experience and an astounding endeavor. It has such a simple concept but it can become more addicting than almost any other game out there. There are moments of discovery in the game that will literally floor you the first time you see them. Do you want proof for how much fun this game is? I lost 16 hours of gameplay and I’m not even that upset about it because it gave me a chance to explore a new world and build even more things. I can’t think of many other games that could make such a grievous error and not completely remove any desire to play the game again, but that’s what Minecraft is. You want to keep playing, you want to keep exploring and you want to keep building. Prepare to lose some sleep.

Final Score: A-

Compared to:

Forge Mode in Halo: This is perhaps the closest thing in a video game to Minecraft. The difference with Forge is that it is purely for building things. Players have spent thousands of hours creating new game modes, fortresses and plenty more. Minecraft however offers the ability to make impressive structures while also including a compelling game based on survival and mining.

Playing with LEGOs: It’s pretty clear that Minecraft and LEGO hold a close connection for many people. Players, like myself, who have fond memories of playing with LEGOs are likely to become hooked by this new world. Both games have situations where you will run out of materials while building stuff. With LEGOs that meant begging your mom to go buy more, while with Minecraft it just means another trip to the mine.