9.2 /10 1 Votes
Initial release date 19 December 2011 | 9.2/10 Crazy Games Designer Markus Persson Mode Single-player video game | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Platforms iOS, BlackBerry, Java, Windows Phone Similar Markus Persson games, Other games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Minicraft is a 2D top-down action game designed and programmed by Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, for the Ludum Dare #22, a 48-hour game programming competition. The game was released on December 19, 2011.
Contents
Gameplay
The player roams a world and must "chop down trees, mine rocks, fight zombies, and build shelter." It is also stated in the official description, in line with the theme, that "the goal of the game is to kill the only other sentient being in the world, making sure you’ll be alone forever.The basic controls for a standard keyboard are "W, A, S, D,"/arrow keys for movement, and space/C for item use. Inventory is ENTER/X keys. The game greatly resembles The Legend of Zelda being that it appears to be a basic dungeon crawl.
Development
Minicraft was developed by Markus Persson, on December 19, 2011. It was created in 48 hours as a part of the 22nd Ludum Dare competition, which requires game developers that enter the contest to make a game in that time frame based on a theme that is released just before the time starts. For this Ludum Dare, the theme was "Alone". During the 48 hours, Persson also livestreamed his coding of the game and made blog entries on the Ludum Dare website for significant milestones he reached. Minicraft competed against 891 other games, with the judging based on nine categories, some of which include "innovation, fun, graphics, audio, humor and mood". The voting for best game was determined by the Ludum Dare community and the time for voting ended on January 9, 2012.
Sequel
Persson tweeted on December 26, 2011, that he was working on Minicraft 2, but was planning on changing that interim title. When asked what type of direction the game would be going in, Persson responded, "action roguelike with crafting and modifiable terrain." On January 1, 2012, Persson announced via Twitter that the new title for the sequel to Minicraft was to be MiniTale. He also obtained "the .com and .net" URLs with the title to host the game on.
Critical reception
The game was commonly likened to the early The Legend of Zelda games, with reviewers like Rock, Paper, Shotgun writer Alec Meer adding, "It's a good (and compulsive) time, and impressively complete for a mere 48 hours of crunch". Rob Beschizza, writing for Boing Boing, reviewed the game, stating, "Achieved through just a few hours of coding, Minicraft manages to captivate in a manner similar to the original game, marking a notable accomplishment." It does, however, suffer from shallowness and grind. There's not much to do except plow through the process of emptying each level in search of better ores." VentureBeat writer Dan Crawley commented on the gathering system, saying, "A simple but addictive approach to resource gathering helps give the game a whimsical charm not a million miles from that of its big brother." Matt Bradford of GamesRadar stated that, "The project is about as basic as one can expect from a marathon coding competition, but the mere fact it's actually a solid, playable game is a testament to Persson's skill" and also pointed out that "this could easily be a discount app for iOS or a PS Mini."
