While Minecraft is hardly the first sandbox game, there is no doubt its popularity has caused a huge resurgence in the genre and we’re seeing a bunch of new games and new attention in the genre. The following is a shortlist of these with some general impressions.

• Minecraft – The famous Minecraft. Great crafting, popular and complex. Currently in beta. Check out my review.
• Terraria – 2D clone which has surpassed clonehood by merging combative platform elements with the sandbox elements. Check out my review.
• Wurm Online – I love Wurm but it’s a significantly different game to Minecraft. I would call it a pioneering sandbox game. Check out my review.
• Ace of Spades – Free, great change of pace which is totally combat oriented in a vague WW2 style. The block crafting aspect is used tactically.
• Dig-N-Rig – Windows only, free, 2D, sci-fi with cute conveyors
• Minetest-c55 – Free, really quite a good Minecraft clone with a lot of potential. No mobs and none of the complexity but looks good and I think I will keep an eye on it. Runs without java on Windows and Linux.
• Manic Digger – An open source Minecraft clone which gives some hope for something good in the future. Still needs work but is functional and looking good so far. Does not need java.
• Infiniminer – Actually Minecraft is a clone of this.  So this is the original inspiration. Much more mining focused and team oriented.
• Cubelands – Simple Minecraft clone that runs in the browser.
• Detonate – TNT gets a lot of fun play in Minecraft but these guys take it to extremes.
• King Arthur’s Gold – 2D like Terraria but has the combat style of Ace of Spades, albeit in a more medieval setting instead of WW2.
• Blockland
• Roblox
• FortressCraft – Xbox 360

So what’s missing?  Well that would be Lego. What the hell are they doing?

It’s great to see so many sandbox style games, I hope to see this whole genre improve over time.  Some of these may yet be reviewed and all of them are worth a quick look if you have the time to spare.

h/t: Gameblaster 64, RPS

Adventure, Bosses, Blocks!

Release Date: 17th May 2011

Developer: Re-Logic

Genre: Side-scrolling sandbox-action-adventure-RPG (very cross genre huh?)

Mode: Single/Multiplayer

Version: 1.0.5

Terraria inevitably gets compared to Minecraft and I’ve done a bit of that in this review. All told that’s fair enough as both are exploration-rich sandbox games. However, it may do injustice to Terraria. For as a Minecraft clone, Terraria is pretty awful. It’s simple graphically, 2D and the building scope is limited. But, you see, Terraria shines because it has grown beyond a simple Minecraft clone. It truly fleshes out the sandbox genre by offering something new. Terraria crosses the fun of platform games with the sandbox concepts and as such is more combat intense and rewards exploration more than Minecraft does.

Terraria, frankly, is even more unforgiving to a fresh player than Minecraft was. You really need to build a basic shelter pretty damn quick and it’s not quite obvious how everything works. Fortunately an NPC, the Guide, will help you in this area. The community is quite active and, like Minecraft, the wiki is a super-important read. If you’re the gung-ho explorer type it doesn’t take long to discover than the corruption biome is cruel to newbies.

In terms of complexity Minecraft easily wins out due to things like redstone and the 3D nature. However, Terraria probably has more item variety and certainly has more different mobs to face, approximately 30, including 4 or so bosses. A real seller for me was the inclusion of Silver which I adore.

Terraria has an alchemy system which comes in very useful, especially for healing.

There’s also some very nice touches. One of them is the Bloodmoon where the moon turns to blood and an awful lot of evil walks the earth. During Bloodmoon zombies can open doors. There’s a similar event called Goblin Attack which is fairly self-explanatory.

Another nice touch is Mana which is done in a brilliant way via falling stars. Hello Notch, paying attention? This leads to spells and all the fun that entails.

The last nice touch I thought was that Terraria has NPCs and they are even useful, mostly as traders.

Oh BTW if you’re wondering how to pause Terraria you just have to switch focus out of the game. Doesn’t work in multiplayer though, of course.

Terraria is a fairly difficult game, especially as you first adapt to the game mechanics. It’s even worse if you’re not used to platform style games with the jumping around being a problem I experienced. As you get used to it though the difficulty sharply reduces and really boils down to where precisely you go and explore and if you feel like tangling with the game bosses. The more you explore, the more new and difficult areas you will find.

Terraria offers positive entertainment via the innovative cross of platform with sandbox play. There’s some scope for creativity, as for all sandbox games, and there’s a lot to discover.

Terraria is built like a 16-bit sprite based side-scrolling platform game. The graphics are basic and 2D which you can see from the screenshots. The only real complaint with the graphics is how difficult it is to spot ores. Iron ore, in particular, is just a shade redder than stone making is a bit of an eye-popper to find. Actually come to think of it an option to make all the graphics a bit bigger would be very welcome.

Terraria’s lighting is quite dynamic compared to Minecraft. Sparks fly out and plants pulse with light.

The music is a different style than what I’ve heard before and really I quite enjoy it even after many hours of play. The sound effects are mostly good and come in useful in many cases.

Terraria runs on Windows only via Steam for $US 9.99. It may come for the iOS or Xbox in the future.

In the end, Terraria puts adventure first and crafting second, unlike Minecraft. As such it plays quite differently and can be quite a lot of fun.

Game: 3½/5    Positive:

Pioneering a Great Sandbox Game

Release Date: 6th June 2006

Developer: Onetoofree AB ie Rolf Jansson and Team

Genre: Sandbox RPG

Mode: MMO

Wurm is a light fantasy, role-playing, skill-based, sandbox game which is done in the first person perspective. Notch, who developed Minecraft, was one of the original developers of this game but had left quite some time ago, and Rolf Jansson and his Team are the current developers.

There are two servers with ‘Freedom’ being the most populated. ‘Wild’ is the Player versus Player (PvP) server and Freedom is the Player versus Environment (PvE) server. The two are linked but most of your stuff does not go with you. There’s also a player economy based on coins. Silver coins can be bought with real money. The coins can be used to buy player made items (which are actually worth it) and to pay for villages and their upkeep.

The fantasy elements are very light with a few fantasy creatures such as goblins , trolls and unicorns. There is also magic but it is not like most fantasy game because it has to be developed and puts severe restrictions on your character. This means magic is quite rare as well as very useful.

In many ways the role-playing and sandbox elements of the game give it a very strong pioneer and survivalist feel especially on the more dangerous wild server. Because Wurm is so open ended, players are able to assume realistic and varied roles.

The game world is vast at around 512 square km (198 sq miles) and rich with topography, structures, biomes, people and wildlife. Because it is a sandbox game it is designed to be altered. You can chop trees down, alter the ground to flatten or shape, build your own structures, mine into the ground, build roads and found a village.

The tutorial allows for a gentle learning curve. Although it is tightly scripted the world opens up once done which lets you do what you want

Being new to Wurm means you will likely benefit from the community’s vast knowledge and the Wurmpedia. You may also decide to join a village or some friends. All these will help you understand how to do things from making a rake to finding iron ore in your mine. There is a lot to learn. This game is very rich in content.

There are no NPC quests. Nope not a single one. Everything you are driven to do is through yourself or other players wanting or needing it done. The fictional and boring NPC quest driven time wasting device is gone. No more of fetch me 45 golden eggs of magical whimsy by killing 250 mystical Poobahs. And it couldn’t be less missed. Now any ‘quest’ is driven by desire and need. You want to find gold for a reason, you’re hunting for the meat you need, you visit somewhere because they have something you actually want.

Monsters are another big difference. They are relatively rare and not instant kills and there is no +10 Great Chainsaw Sword of Instant Death. Most creatures are real or enlarged real animals eg deer or huge spider. Some of these creatures are quite dangerous. Death in the game leaves all your valuable stuff on the body and causes slight skill loss. Thus death is a serious consequence and you have to go back to your body (and likely the monster which killed you) to get your stuff back. For really hardcore players in the Wild server your stuff can be looted as well. This monster difficulty and death mechanism is a huge improvement to immersion in the game. In other MMOs like Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft you can’t turn around without bashing your shield on one of the millions of fast spawning monster clones. In Wurm killing just one giant spider can be an epic battle and because it was fun it can actually be memorable. In Warcraft killing 100 is just boring. Ask yourself, do you remember many of the battles in those other games?

What I can’t do in this space is go over all the content, but let me assure you that there is a lot for you to enjoy. There are 114 Skills, 10 Player Characteristics, 3 Religion Characteristics and 4 Gods. There’s also a huge array of titles to earn. The content is enough that the question of not having much to do pretty much never pops up.

Wurm is also actively developed so content comes in on game updates all the time. The major update changes I’ve seen while playing are ships and boats, animal breeding, a great deal of graphical improvement, ambient sounds and non housing structures.

The goal in Wurm is just as open ended. Obviously survival is a plus but past that is what you would like to do. Run a village? Go PvP and raid? Explore and hunt with friends? Try your hand at squeezing some money out of the economy with traders? Blacksmithing all day? Design and Build your own house? Breed ridable horses? Build a winery and vineyard?

Wurm is a good game for positive entertainment because it can help people unfamiliar with products in their everyday life to understand the basics of where they come from as well as providing a good place for creativity and open ended expression.

I want to emphasize that wurm can be quite difficult at two levels. One is the learning curve factor. The tutorial and community can help but there really is a lot to understand since this game mimics real life to a degree.

There’s also creatures which are very tough and there’s no ‘red’ type of warning for that. The solution to that is to learn to see them before they see you and to run away like a screaming girl in pigtails if you have to.

Wurm is very much pretty and even more so at a distance. You can see some stupendous vistas in many places in the game. There are sunsets, rain, fog and lightening. The water is breathtaking and has been the best water I’ve ever seen in a game. There is one glaring problem amidst all this beauty. Player models and many creature models are awful especially in animation. They say they are working on this. It is needed.

There is the occasional music played in the game but I admit I turn them off. It’s not so much that the music is unpleasant, quite the contrary, but more that it suddenly blares out at you for no apparent reason.

In game sounds have vastly improved and are now very good with the only exception I know being fires are painfully loud for some reason.

Getting into the game flaws, there are a lot of rules on villages and other things which can detract from the fun. The rules are fair for the most part but can be hard to follow and sometimes cause mistakes.

Sometimes the interface can be a bit confusing because it is not the standard type one usually expects.

Wurm runs entirely through Java which means it runs on Linux, Macs and Windows of any flavour, and installation is easy. You can get it from here but make sure you have Java installed first.

There is one character per account. You can play for free but to play at a premium level letting your skills become high and giving you access to other features costs €10 for 2 months.

Onetoofree also makes money from in game silver spent on village upkeep for those who like to do that. You can also use the in game currency to buy premium time.

Game: 4/5    Positive: 

The problem with wanting something is it seems like it never comes.

So there I am in Minecraft admiring the just released update 1.5. Well, trying to. I’m looking for the weather effects naturally. After having a quick look at the new rail blocks, namely the detector and booster blocks, I waited for the rains. The lightning damn it. Snow? Anything? But no the sun shines all happy at me. So I roll a new world hoping in my twisted logic that a new world will make it rain more.

But no, it’s still sunny and happy.

I was promised rain, snow, thunder and lightening created zombie pigmen dammit. Well it looks like the weather events are quite rare indeed but fortunately there is an official video of it available already.

The main additions to update 1.5 are:

• Weather Effects such as rain, snow, thunder and lightening created zombie pigmen. Weather is quite rare. Thunderstorms are light level 7, enough to spawn monsters in the daytime. Rain will put out most fires but not lava. Snow will cover the ground and make ice blocks in the water. Rain goes through transparent objects.
• Shift-click lets you pull items to inventory or a chest without all that dragging and dropping. Might not seem like much but it adds up when you do it so often.
• Statistics – Not a bad array of statistics are available including such details as your deaths, kills, time played, distance moved via various means and item usage.
• Achievements – pretty basic so far, obviously more are added later. There are also plans to put the statistics online.

• Detector Rail – basically a stone plate activated on the rail which could be done by other means before but this is certainly nicer. They are a bit bugged. You must place this object before you place rails next to it.

• Booster Rail – A long awaited booster piece of ‘powered’ rail you can switch on or off via the usual redstone circuitry. This can replace the older, rather complex (and frankly silly looking) rail boosters. Fortunately the old boosters still work, for now at least.

• Climbing ladders with gaps is no longer possible
• The wood types have been fleshed out a bit more with new saplings for birch and spruce, for example. Hopefully this will lead to new wood developments.
• Wolves are now more common and they handle doors a bit better.
• There are also many minor changes such as the ability to change the GUI scale, Advanced Open GL option, faster movement of objects in water and placing redstone on snow.

A while ago the target date of the final version of minecraft (it’s currently beta) was also announced to be November the 11^th 2011. In other words, 11/11/11 like many other entertainment releases.

Minecraft update 1.4 is here. They wanted to get in achievements and statistics but although much of the code in in there, it’s not working well enough so will be pushed to another update. Along with the usual bugfixes and new improved bugs the main changes are:

• Tameable wolves. You tame the fairly rare, mostly peaceful wild wolves. You can have more than one. You tame them with bone but feed them raw pork.
• Sleeping in a bed resets your spawn point.
• Cookies.
• New rare sheep spawn colours pink and brown.
• New Minecraft logo. I preferred the old one.
• More common flowers, mushrooms and dungeons.
• Dungeon chests may contain cocoa beans. These are for the cookies and can also be used as brown dye.
• Slower movement in water and faster growing wheat which is no longer trampled by spiders.

Of most note however is an amusing new locked chest block which spawns randomly in new areas and emits light. When you interact with it a box pops up prompting you to buy a key to unlock it here.

On that note check out the Minecraft USB nether portal at ThinkGeek. The video is great.