At first I was like “wtf” when I discovered that the second Gaming challenge hosted by the cat on the Café was going to be Minecraft. I knew it from the memes and shit, but never actually had the chance (or the community) to play it.
They decided to play on an older version of the game, because it should have been playable on older hardware as well, so we were missing some game updates (not that I care, considering the fact I never stepped inside anyway).
So after setting up PolyMC with a 1.12.2 instance, I connected to our private server and started to explore around aimlessly like a headless chicken. Got stuck, got killed, drowned, fell from a high place and then proceeded to work on the “mine” part of Minecraft. After a short while, I also discovered through trial and error I the “craft” part of Minecraft as well.
Suddenly, I had to take a break and it was only then when I discovered I played 16 straight hours and needed some rest.
I won’t delve too much in explaining how the game works, there are millions of tutorials, articles and wikis explaining every little thing.
However, I want to mention a few things:
- We also made a collaborative building, started by the cat, then joined by others. It’s amazing the collaborative creation capabilities of a group, when someone just digs a hole in the ground and everyone starts expanding it, digging some more, building walls, rooms, paths and windows.
- I loved digging a basement dungeon, and even if it’s still an empty depot, it will host maybe some player housing like a home-base, or I will turn it into a nuclear silo. The positioning is nice, because it’s close to the cat’s castle, which is fairly close to the spawning point.
- I also started to level a small island, only to make a text construction that can be “seen from space”. However, I’m an idiot and got the orientation wrong so they look upside down on all the maps. And to top it off, I did this once more, in a different place, again upside down. Because I’m that dumb.
- I also went exploring underground in hope to find some diamonds or some gold, but I wasn’t very lucky. There’s time to mine some more.
- I should have went deeper into crafting, but this part is so vast, it feels so overwhelming as a new player, especially the recipe discovery mechanism which can be confusing until you get used to it.
However, regardless of the shit I’ve done, I have to say mad props to the incredible things some experienced people in the community made, from the big cat logo, the big BSD d(a)emon, the million sheep farm, the immense underground caves buildings and villages.
Apart of some very rare crashes (which I think are because this is running in Java on Apple Silicon, so I have no idea how many layers of translation, conversion and virtualization) are there between me and the game, the experience was flawless. Playing on my screen’s native resolution of 3440x1440, I had no technical issues and the gaming experience is beautiful. Just lose yourself in the music and pretty much the world is your oyster.
Build, smash, dig, kill, build again, that’s pretty much it for Minecraft. But what makes this game one of the best of all time is definitely the community you’re playing it with: if you have a cool group (like we do!) then you’re bound to learn a lot and become very good at it. But the most important part is that you will have a ton of fun while doing this.
So, “Minecraft” should come with an addiction warning label, and there’s not much I can say about it. The game itself is absolutely fantastically bonkers, just find yourself a nice group of people and go at it. Ah-maze-ing game, definitely one of the best of all time. Six joysticks.
PS: I want to thank once more to sizeof.cat for hosting the event and the server, to Myrdincx and bonk for setting up the server and to everyone who participated, it was a lot of fun!
