Minecraft creeper background

Stare into the abyss

available in classic or mean joe green

inspired by this wallpaper

minecraft ancient city creative mode

Hi, Minecrafters! No deep insight in this post, just a picture of a city I'm building right now. It's set to cover a large expanse of steep coastal hills.

click to biggify

I'm using the johnsmith v8.5 texture pack, which is one of the classiest packs out there right now. I'm very happy with the look so far, and every building has a "function" so that the city feels natural, but I'm open to suggestion on what types of ancient structures I should include.

So far I have a Sea Goddess Temple, a Builder God Temple, 2 Halls of Ascent, a lighthouse (the thing with the fire on it), and a dock system with automatic rails leading to a warehouse. The structure I'm working on now is a royal palace.

Blade Runner Lego Minifigures; The Minecraft Lego set

Blade Runner Lego Minifigures made as a commission by Legohaulic.

And speaking of Lego, you can preorder the official Lego Minecraft set:




Via.

*Previously: Blade Runner paper toys.

5 Things Minecraft Shows us about Ourselves

A quick glance at where Minecraft was when I first picked it up one year ago

Compared to where it is now...

Images Courtesy Pucklovesgames / minecraftdl

Only kidding about this last one, or am I?

Shows you how fast one compelling piece of software can advance in a matter of months, even when the graphic upgrades are almost all fan-created. Sure, Mojang has pushed out some impressive updates, things that make the UI and the content richer and more user-friendly (aka they forever silenced our complaints by giving us cats), but they haven't messed with the original big-block graphics.

Why haven't they? Because it would break the game, causing enraged gamers to birth actual kittens, and those kittens would storm the infamous Mojang Castle. 

Which brings me to my point: Minecraft is the first large-scale game of it's type, and like every truly groundbreaking game, it lets us do something we've always wanted to do, but couldn't do before now:

Play with the fundamental building blocks of an entire world in easy-to-stack-and-count cube form.

I think that by filling a new need, it highlights a number of things about our species, such as...

#5. We love maximum freedom within firm constraints, not total freedom.

This one seems a gimme, but it isn't always clear to game designers, or anyone else for that matter. Parents need to set strict boundaries that simultaneously allow enough room to foster their child's imagination and creativity. As parents of "problem children" know, It's no easy task to know where the lines need to be drawn.

Picture a kid whose parents don't give a crap, and then one with parents that enforce the strictest of lock-down environments. Those are the two extremes when it comes to game design too, and they provide equally shitty results. 

Gamers hate being locked into boringly or too rigidly forced structure in games (worst of all when those rules are used to make us shell out money just to play with full features), and second only to that, we despise not being told exactly what we can and cannot do.

You said you wanted a cat. Enjoy.

We love choice, but we need to know our choices have consequences, and what those are, precisely.

Often, the best places to find inspiration for what rules work nicely is to begin with a rough analog of how things work in nature.

Bonus Hint: Parents, look to baboon troops.

Minecraft took that concept and used it to ask one great question: "Hey, how would the world work if instead of tiny atoms as building blocks we used actual giant fucking building blocks?"

It sounds kind of "hurr", and too obvious, but then don't all the greatest inventions, in hindsight?

It's the best possible place to begin, when exploring the freedom of an analogue to our own very complex universe. Start small. Baby steps.

You might be thinking of cocky examples of games right now that bust this rule somehow, but I assure you smugly that there are no such things, or none that are successful.

When you get the rules right, the product will feel right too.

That's why Minecraft can get away with rude graphics that insult your video card with primitively grunted proto-cusses.

Moo-f*#*-ooooo

You see, this is exactly how a world that asks that one great question above should look.

How does Minecraft play? Why, precisely like it should, given its natural rules; Chunky, blocky, rude, cute, stupidly easy, yet containing the ingredients and tools to let you be as unbelievably complex and imaginative as your mind can manage.

Sound like any world you know, writ small?

To-scale representation of how subtle I am

They've gone on to ask what different dimensions would look like too, such as hell and a weird sort of purgatory you get to visit as "The End", which coincidentally tells you what the designers think about having an end-game in the first place. These variations are adventurous, but the same basic concept. You have a world with set laws of physics and interaction that behaves sort of like ours, so it looks sort of like ours, but not any more or less than it should.

As I said, it fills a specific need that nothing else quite does yet, but there are contenders coming close. Soon, it could be overshadowed by something that is as easy and natural to use, fills the the same need, but does it with more realism, polish, and with even more world-manipulation options.

Until such time, Minecraft is king, and while it is, it will be endlessly tinkered with by astute and talented people who clamor forth in a great glittering horde whenever a new need is filled. It's pretty much the same thing as tinkering with cars or computers, because...

#4. If you create something that fills a need, fans will make it their own.

As if we didn't fear Miatas before.

When true needs are met by something, people will fall in love with that something. When people love something they will try to make it their own creation.

The most basic examples are food, sleep, sex, and transportation, but we modify and ritualize everything we love, to the point where we feel comfortable with it being an actual part of our self.

Minecraft lets us do this to the appearance of the game, with simplified function always bleeding through to the form, but even so, the results of love are surprising and awe-inspiring.

Images courtesy Gamefront / Surviving Minecraft

What about the interior of the game though, the nuts and bolts that make us stay in a blocky Matrix and spend countless hours fretting and chiseling away like mad dwarves?

Here again, people want the freedom described above, with the right look, but mostly they want to get the job done. Minecraft players want what they were thinking about making to end up looking right, be satisfying to build, and involve logical methods to get from block A to block B.

In fact, people will quickly adapt to a logical step-unlock system if you make it clear and consistent, because...

#3. People will use anything as a tool, as long as it does the job.

Who woulda thought Smurfs would be so easy to skin?

Your job in Minecraft, nebulously, is as I said before: Making your own creations.

The history of all technology is the history of finding tools that make manipulation of our environment easier.

In Survival Mode you get to interact with the world as if it was a hostile land filled with bad guys, and you must survive your first night in the wilds by thinking fast, building faster, and hoping you don't get blown up by psychotic, dynamite-filled, armless Gumbies.

It's something like being a pioneer on a newly terraformed Mars with a bunch of flesh-starved aliens who thirst for your fluids.

In Hardcore Mode, survival hinges on one life alone. It's a stark ruleset, but fun if you're into that sort of realism.

Much like our world, the first thing people learn to use in either of these modes is their fists. You can assault a tree to pieces, which you can then immediately use to build a worktable, which you can then use to spew forth pickaxes, each of which has a limit to the block types it can give you to use in your mad fancies.

Clearly, at no point in the harvesting->crafting->building cycle does Minecraft closely resemble how the real world works. 

It all does work though, with incredible fluency between ideas, simply because the tools are as true as the blocks are to their counterparts, atoms. Which is to say that Minecraft tools are crude things that do roughly the same job as their real-world analog in a tiny fraction of the time, with magnified results, and with a perfect success rate.

How do you only test something that refuses to fail AND defies logic?
Image courtesy sexypimp.com (no, seriously).

Tools should let the gamer take #5 (freedom with rules), and mash it with #4 (wanting to make the world your very own) to the maximum limit of mashyness.

I'm IN Avatar!

This limit is where Mojang will have to smartly push Minecraft, further and further.

New tools (assembly plants?). New environments (deep sea diving?). Higher ceilings (to space, and beyond?), 

or tools that automatically generate cities, or even entire cultures?

Whatever else happens, the limits are going to change, as the users of the tools adapt and create new tools.

Signs of this sort of evolution of ideas is evident already in the current game community. There are so many man-hours being inputted to one end only: 

Creation.

And nothing makes creation easier than turning on God Mode, known as "Creative Mode" in the Parlance of the Mine.

But wait! That's cheating! (Says an annoying, high-pitched voice)

Not so. When it comes to realizing our dreams of making stuff, it turns out that what might pass for cheating on other games only makes this one better because...

#2. There is no cheating when you play Creator, only the art of creation.

That's it. Whether we talk about the GUI or the Gameplay, simulated realities only have to simulate enough of reality to make us happy in our creations, as we evolve ourselves through the mishmash of ideas pushing against constraints and changing them.

Bending the rules becomes the ground from which artwork and innovation bloom.

Creative Mode lets the Minecraft user have infinite resources of all types, flight, and the the ability to break blocks with a single karate chop. So there are still rules and steps, but they are much-abbreviated. What could possibly be better in a simulated analog reality where our very existence in the game is only to create and observe as we see fit?

That's right, Middle Earth, a goddamn entire world, is being made, block-by-block, to scale. 

We're visibly frothing for more. Not only are projects like this underway, there are other people creating new texture packs and new tools for Minecraft as you read this very sentence. It's evolving at a singularly rapid pace, and will do so unless replaced because...

...

#1. Simulated reality is our favorite distraction from actual reality, and will only become more so.

In simulated Earth you can play Governator and no one will laugh at you

What a surprise, right? That's it. Minecraft is only the beginning of our playing Bob the Buildergod in sandboxes that will look and act increasingly more lifelike and fantastic at the same time.

That trend will change the state of the genre over time, with the future holding virtual worlds that we can live and breathe in that let us achieve our wildest fantasies (Porncraft).

For now though we have Minecraft in its current flexing form. Soon enough though we'll be out of the primitive soup and flopping about on weird new lands while a James Horner soundtrack plays in the background.

It's cool, you won't need a neck where you're going!

But hey, you don't have to agree with me. Let's face it: No single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood. Or something else condescending. Anyway, let me know what you think about Minecraft and what it means to you by leaving a comment or two.

Yet Another Humble Bundle – Voxatron, Blocks That Matter and The Binding of Isaac

I've written before about the Humble Indie Bundles and their many advantages, pay whatever you want, support charity, DRM-free Indie games that deserve our support, and these are all still true. I've purchased every one of the bundles I've encountered since I became aware of them, and have been extremely happy with my decision. Though "bundles" that are initially released as just one game, but frequently get more content added gradually are happening more regularly, they've consistently been a great value and the Voxatron Debut bundle is no exception. In this case, unlike the Frozen Synapse Bundle, the "main" game is the weakest of the titles (for now) included, so paying more than the average to get the bonus games is a must.

Let's start with that main event, available for any price, as low as $0.01, the Alpha release build of the Robotron-inspired voxel-based shooter Voxatron. The 3D graphics combines with an old-school aesthetic not unlike Minecraft in a shooting game that is unlike most of what I've played on the market. You play a character with a basic gun, the ability to move in all directions and jump, and when you shoot, it locks your direction of aim and movement together into a strafe based on where you are pointing. It feels like the arcade classic it takes its name from with the way movement and shooting interact, but the controls end up feeling extremely clunky, and that takes a lot away form the game. I've also suffered a few crash bugs and framerate slowdowns, but I expect these will be corrected in future patches. The one thing that saves this game from mediocrity is the fact that players can use an editing program with building blocks to build and add their own content and custom levels, and turning a community's creativity loose on your project is a sure way to ensure a lot of content (quality, and otherwise.)

The Binding of Isaac is a twisted little game that combines features of shooters, the original Legend of Zelda dungeons, and roguelike RPGs. The story is that of a child whose mother hears God's voice telling her to murder her son to prove her faith, and the weeping, naked boy escapes into his basement, which is filled with awful things. There are disgusting and hellish elements from bosses based on blobs of flesh with cleft palates, enemies weeping blood or vomiting flies, and upgrades related to the occult and implied child abuse. The arenas are randomly generated every time the game starts, power-ups and bosses are different with each playthrough and there are tons of unlockables and achivements to earn. The game is tinged with a disgusting dark sense of humor but it is never funny, images which could (and perhaps should) be shocking are rendered with a cartoon style that robs them of their power and just makes them part of the game world. If the concept of playing as an abused child using his tears as a weapon against demonic creatures and confronting his own fears and personal demons doesn't offend, you may find that the overall solid game design makes this one a lot of fun to play.

My personal favorite game in the series is the platform/puzzler Blocks That Matter. The game combines elements of Tetris and Minecraft to form a unique experience that directly pays homage to its inspirations. Indie Developers Alexey and Markus have been kidnapped, and their secret project, the Tetrobot is the only way they can free themselves. The robot can destroy and collect many blocks such as sand, wood and dirt, and is able to replace them elsewhere in the level, but only in shapes of four consecutive blocks, like tetris pieces. Parts of the four block designs may again be destroyed and collected, leaving bits to stand and jump on to reach other parts of the level. As levels progress, there may be massive spots where there are blocks that cannot be drilled through, but, like Tetris, any line of eight (or more) blocks can be made to vanish. Figuring out how to make the various types of blocks interact and being efficient with them allows for progress through the games many stages.

This bundle will be available until Monday, November 14^th, 2011 and the bonus games both have Steam and Desura activation codes. Like other bundles, bonus titles are available if the price chosen for the bundle is higher than the average for all bundles purchased thus far, so about $5.50USD (as of the moment) gets you all three titles, and any of these games is worth at least twice that.

Minecraft Adventure Update 1.8, Released!

Minecraft's Adventure Update has been released, after a long time of development (that was definitely worth it!). The combat looks a lot better, you can run, you have a food bar (showing when you need more food) and there's a new monster. There are also new NPC towns! And some other new places as well. Quite a few new things other than this - go ahead and see this to find out more:

MineCraft 1.8, the Adventure Update

Minecraft is often eventually abandoned by folks who exhaust the limits of what they want to build in-game within their capacity for patience and how much effort they are willing to put into the game. I can't say that I blame them. The ability to build and craft is great, but once you've made your castles, houses, startships or what have you, the few monsters in the game can be fought, but to what real end? Notch and the rest of Mojang knew that what they have on their hands is the basics of a powerful engine, but in terms of "gamelike" content, it is a little bit sparse. Dungeons are exceptionally rare and difficult to find, have a monster generator and maybe a few chests inside. Not a whole lot of unique reward for exploration. The solution: add a lot more content. Update 1.8 is the start of a brave new direction for Minecraft, and one that should attract a broader range of players.

Randomly generated NPC village. Man, I can't wait until these are inhabited.

I've mentioned most of this before, in my profile on Notch himself. The new information I have on Minecraft is from this past weekend up until now. The "adventure update" has a bold list of features. NPC villages, abandoned mines, new monsters, improved biome code, the ability to sprint, the addition of hunger and experience gain, more dungeons to explore and an overall improved lighting system. There was a preview of the new build at Penny Arcade's PAX convention, and speculation that we'd see an early September wide release. September 8^th was tossed about as a probable date for 1.8 to go live, and everyone began preparing to explore villages (even if actual NPCs aren't in yet) and avoid Endermen.

The news came down on 9/7 that a full release for the patch wasn't happening. There were too many bugs, features were partially implemented or broken... worse, the game kept crashing. Quietly, on Friday, September 9^th, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten put up a file that could be downloaded from the minecraft servers, if one knew where to look. The location of the file was "leaked" to several internet forums, and it was a playable, if extremely buggy build for the long awaited update. Installation requires a little bit of computer knowledge (you have to at least be comfortable with locating and replacing a specific file manually,) and people willing to endure crashes and the occasional glitch could get a look at 1.8. I was one of those people.

Abandoned mining operation, as I found it, placing a single torch for light.

I was immediately impressed by the new biome code, which is the thing that sounds least exciting in the list of features, but has the most dramatic immediate visual impact on the game. A biome, in this context, is a set of rules for random generation of terrain so that features that should naturally occur near each other will. Biomes mean that we don't see a cactus in the middle of the swamp, ice in the desert, etc. I found a deep chasm with a river at the bottom and traces of an abandoned mining operation with wooden supports, broken stretches of minecar track and cobwebs strewn about, the sound of skeletons and spiders lurking within the defunct mine suggesting the reason it is no longer bustling with activity. I noticed that coal and even iron seemed to be much more plentiful in this area, and in caves in general, rewarding exploration.

As exciting as the mining chasm was, I wanted to explore everything the new build had to offer. Sure, there were some major performance hits, lag and poor framerate, but this is a preview "unofficial" build, and I wouldn't hold that, or the occasional memory leak/crash bug against it. I headed out to explore some more. Torches now cast a flickering yellowish light, and if you can manage to actually run the game with the view distance that far out, sunsets look amazing. I wasn't just here to enjoy geography however, I had to explore the land. Before I could find a village or a dungeon to explore, night was falling and I ducked into a cave, putting a door on the entrance to keep monsters out. I dropped a few torches, and realized I wasn't alone. Pale green eyes turned toward me from the darkness, from a pair of tall figures calmly moving blocks of stone around the cave I'd chosen to rest in. I'd found endermen.

Creepy.  Maybe I should have dug my own shelter that night.

The figures were menacing but not hostile, moving toward me not particularly aggressively, as I wasn't looking directly at them. Smoke rose from their coal-black skin, and trapped in the confined space, I got too close and their mouths opened, and they strode toward me with murder in their eyes. I readied my sword and as they got right in front of me, "poof" they both vanished. I could still hear them around me, sounding like zombies, and I ran through the cave planting torches, one reappeared and struck me from behind, only to vanish again once I turned around. I hid in the cave, back to the wall until sunup, and left the hole to find both endermen waiting for me outside in the pre-dawn hours before the sun claimed them. I fought, they fell and dropped curious green pearls that seem to serve no purpose at this time. I crafted a boat, and set off.

After some searching and a few more nights in shelters carved from island rock, I finally spoptted what I'd been looking for in the distance. There was a structure on the coast ahead that clearly wasn't naturally occuring. I got out of my boat and headed toward what looked like a tower of some sort, but turned out to be a well. I found some farmland, several mixed wood and stone buildings, eerily empty but ready for habitation, some even had libraries full of books inside. I wanted to explore a bit more, but crash bugs were becoming more frequent and frustrating, and I knew I'd likely discard this world I'd generated for testing upon official release. Today, 9/13 a second version of the prerelease was uploaded as Jeb worked on the bugs discovered by so many weekend playtesters. The official release should be soon, hopefully. I look forward to playing a lot more minecraft with the bold new direction the game is headed in.

Minecraft Adventure Update 1.8!

Here is an awesome video preview showing off EVERYTHING from the new adventure update, or update 1.8!

The Man Behind the Mines, Markus “Notch” Persson.

There's been a lot of news lately about the creator of Minecraft, best known online by his nickname “Notch.” As a developer, he's one of the respected pillars of video game culture for being all around decent to his many fans, and with some of the studios out there, the bar isn't set particularly high with regard to customer service. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Sony, EA and Activision.) With the possible exception of Valve's Gabe Newell, I'd go so far as to say that Markus Persson is the best loved industry figure by the vast majority of geeks. With his name in the news a little bit, it seems as though right now is the perfect time to talk about why.

Seeing as how I wore a similar hat and coat throughout college,
I also approve of his fashion sense.

Notch is the founder of Swedish game studio Mojang, and his phenomenal rise to success with indie smash hit Minecraft is well known. (I've even written about it once already.) As a designer and game developer with King.com, Notch had a “day job” working on titles like Wurm Online. What he really wanted to do was to branch out on his own and create something that he could support, and even sell himself. Inspired by Infiniminer from Zach industries and the roguelike game Dwarf Fortress, the combination of procedurally generated block-mining with crafting and monsters in a roleplaying-like setting got him started on Minecraft. Soon after, he quit his full-time job to work on it, a decision that paid off. The success of millions of sales from what started as a personal design project allowed Persson to found Mojang as a company, and to hire a few employees.

As months have gone by, the company has grown, and continued to update their flagship product while working on a follow-up game, an online collectible card game with board gaming elements called Scrolls. Much of the news these last few weeks has focused on Scrolls, as a controversy around the title of the upcoming release erupted online. Bethesda Softworks, the studio behind the Elder Scrolls series of roleplaying games, has had a pretty good relationship with Notch and Mojang. They've been complimentary of each other's work, as Mojang employees are huge fans of Bethesda games and vice-versa. The positive relationship between the companies made it extremely surprising when Notch got a letter from a Swedish Attorney's office demanding that the use of the word “Scrolls” be eliminated from the title of the new game or a lawsuit would be forthcoming.

Yeah, I was just about to confuse this logo with one for Skyrim.

Cue the torches and pitchforks. It is ludicrous that anyone could confuse “Scrolls” with :The Elder Scrolls,” or that use of a single word shared between titles constitutes infringement. Bethesda has been taking a beating in the press over the legal bullying of a much smaller company run by a highly popular developer. In fairness to Bethesda, they are owned by a media conglomerate called ZeniMax that aggressively defends the copyrights associated with their companies, and some of this can be boiled down to a simple overreaction. Copyright law is murky at best, and claiming to know for certain what is legal and what is not is a great way to get into a pointless and frankly boring debate without hope of resolution. What is clear, however, that where there is a case of infringement, a company is required to defend their intellectual properties in court, or forfeit the right to do so later.

While Notch hasn't kept quiet about the situation, he isn't exactly fanning the fires of the angry mob. He's been forthright about the whole thing, saying on his blog that it is “partly lawyers being lawyers, and trademark law being the way it is.” He'd offered before the lawsuit to make assurances that every possible step to avoid confusion between the franchises would be taken, including a promise to never put any words in front of “Scrolls” in the title upon the game's release and in any possible future expansions. Today, (August 17^th) Notch further made light of the situation by proposing a “trial by combat” between Bethesda and Mojang, with Quake 3 as the battlefield. Winner take all. I somehow doubt ZeniMax media will go for it, but I appreciate the nod to Tyrion Lannister implicit in the offer.

Casterly Rock approves of this proposal.

Markus Persson also recently celebrated a moment in his personal life with his fans, as he got married on August 13^th, and announced a special offer for anyone who still hadn't yet purchased Minecraft. On the weekend of his wedding, a 2-for-1 sale was available on the game, one copy purchased for yourself, and one for “someone you wub,” according to the site. Personally engaging the fan community and attempting to provide some additional content even when personal obligations and the time sink that comes with a one man operation turning into a multinational game studio continues to endear him to geeks. Events like this have converted many users who have pirated minecraft, which has no DRM besides an onscreen acknowledgement that the user is playing with a pirated copy, and lack of access to official update servers.

Notch has been forthcoming about his views on pirating games, indicating his beliefs that major game studios are approaching the problem using ineffective and potentially harmful strategies, while making it clear that he doesn't believe piracy is OK. A member of the Swedish Pirate Party, he's come out publicly saying that “pirated games do not translate into lost sales,” a position that is at odds with most of the gaming (and other media) industries. Though the piracy numbers on Minecraft are high, value is continually added to the game, and the fanbase is engaged on a personal level so that pirates can be converted into customers. As for the pirates that refuse to pay anything, no matter how small, for content, expensive and ineffective tools like DRM won't be a part of Mojang's strategy. In general, those schemes tend to frustrate legitimate customers while doing nothing to stop piracy, and Notch knows it.

Soon to be no longer the scariest thing in Minecraft. I might recommend
Googling "Endermen" for a preview of one of the upcoming monsters in 1.08.

Finally, Mojang has also been in the news about the current release of a mobile edition of Minecraft, the upcoming “Adventure Update,” and the upcoming full release of the transition from Beta to full game at the recently announced MineCon convention in Las Vegas this November. 1.08, the next update and most likely the last content update before the full release of Minecraft, promises to add a LOT of rpg, exploration and combat-type content. A redesign of dungeons, rewards, the combat system, new monsters and NPCs with their own villages are planned for the release. The most significant major content overhaul since the “Halloween Update” that added the Nether or “Hell” dimension, many fans of the game (including me) are eagerly awaiting an official release date. I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll be loading up the game and ready for a full review.

Roguelikes: The RPG Ancestors of Diablo. Free, Complex... and still relevant.

With the release of Diablo 3 on the horizon, I've done a lot of thinking. Some of it has been about the recent controversy regarding a persistent internet connection required for even single player, and the in-game shop where players can buy and sell in-game items for real money (Blizzard takes a cut, of course.) These issues are important to the geek community, but there is little I can say about those at this point that hasn't already been said many times by many other people. What the bulk of my thoughts has turned to is the history behind games like Diablo and Torchlight, from humble origins as games nearly as old as I am to the current state of massive releases that can inspire Geek Holy Wars like the one that rages on as we speak. Before there was Diablo, there was Nethack, and before there was Nethack, there was Rogue. These early descendents form a subgenre of RPG gaming on computers that is easily overlooked, which is a shame, because nearly every game in the category is free.

Rogue, text symbols only edition. I played this on my Palm Pilot years ago.

Rogue is remembered for giving the name to the category of RPG that it spawned, though when it released in 1980 it wasn't actually the first in its subgenre. The “roguelike” games are characterized by permanent character death, turn-based movement, typically text, ASCII or simple tile-based graphics, and randomly generated content for maximum replayability. “Random” is sort of a misnomer, as a truly random dungeon would inevitably have unplayable features like rooms with no possible way through, stairs or doors that go nowhere, etc. A more correct term is “procedurally generation” where content is randomized with a pre-set series of rules in mind making the dungeons and their inhabitants playable, if not necessarily “fair.” The first game in the roguelike genre was on the Apple II in 1978, called Beneath Apple Manor. It is worth mentioning that neither of the men developing Beneath Apple Manor or Rogue knew about each others' projects while making their games.

Early roguelikes were different from purely text-based dungeoneering games in that they had graphics, after a fashion. Symbols drew out rooms, the player was represented by the “@” symbol, and all manner of foul creatures from rats and slimes to vampires and medusae were typically represented by letters roaming the procedurally generated dungeons. Gold, food, armor, weapons, torches and magic items found in the dungeon all have their own symbols, and typically treasure is nearly as dangerous as the monsters. Items may be cursed, potions actually deadly poison, unidentified scrolls may have unpredictable effects... between the traps, creatures and rewards, sometimes the life of a character in a roguelike game is short and extremely unfair.

NetHack displaying a simple tileset translating the ASCII graphics to simple  image tiles.

Later games improved on the formula and added shops, more character options and depth to the gameplay. Angband, which was heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings, and Hack were early standouts for addition of new and fun features. Hack was followed up by NetHack (the Net added to refer to UseNet groups that distributed new versions of the game,) which enjoyed continued content updates from its original release in 1987 through 2003. In addition to refining the mechanics and systems behind this style of gaming, graphical tilesets became popular. A simple front-end could be added to the base game to translate ASCII symbols into specific graphical tiles to improve the graphics somewhat, though many players prefer the extreme “low-fi” option of playing without a tileset.

I'd be remiss in not mentioning a further offshoot of the roguelike genre that really deserves an article all its own. Dwarf Fortress (full title: Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress,) is, along with Infiniminer, the direct inspiration for Minecraft. Dwarf Fortress combines roguelike graphics, procedurally generated worlds and turn-based gameplay with city-building strategy in a uniquely complex and difficult game. Dwarves dig into the ground or mountains, fashion goods and living spaces, encounter and trade with or war upon other races, and have to deal with threats to survival that range from monsters to starvation and insanity. Someday, I'll be ready to give this game the sort of full writeup it deserves, but despite many hours of trying to get the hang of it, the learning curve has defeated me several times. I have time, however, as even though the game started development in 2004, the most recent update in March 2011 is still an early alpha stage of a game still being worked on.

Dwarf Fortress with a Tileset. Civilizations, trade, economy, even gravity
and erosion are modeled in this ludicrously detailed game.

Though I've played every game I've mentioned in this article with the exception of Beneath Apple Manor, there has been one in particular that has grabbed my attention. As I've said before, I love zombie gaming. Most roguelikes are fantasy, swords and wizards, but my current favorite doesn't have any of that. Rogue Survivor is a zombie apocalypse survival simulation where “treasure” is food, weapons, medical supplies, and fighting is necessary occasionally, but most of the time... you run and hide. There's a lot of work left to do on this game, but in its current state, it is a blast. Your survivor gets skills like “light eater” to consume less food, “hauler” to get extra inventory space, “leadership” to get others to follow, and you get a new skill each time the sun rises.

Rogue Survivor puts you against the constant threat of zombies, the need to scavenge for supplies and find a safe place to sleep. In addition to zombies, skeletons and zombie masters, players need to stay on their guard against biker gangs, other hungry survivors willing to murder for food and employees of the sinister CHAR Corporation. Exploring residences and stores can get some basic equipment, as can picking through what is left over by those unfortunate enough to be cornered and killed by undead. You can barricade buildings, explore the sewers, race to army supply drops when food gets short, hide your cache of goods from other scavengers... There is a lot of depth already in the unfinished version of the game available right now. My personal best time so far is 13 days, when my hardware store base was found by 2 zombie masters, a zombie lord and 5 shamblers and I died with an empty shotgun and six of the eight creatures at my feet.

A public park littered with corpses, a street with cars aflame, and a nearby
skeleton ready to attack in Rogue Survivor. 

Open source, free and infinitely replayable games with constant content updates that have inspired some of the greatest computer games of the current era. Roguelikes are unique in that the existence of the games they inspire doesn't make them obsolete, or any less fun. Most of them are labors of love from a single programmer/designer or a very small team, and I think that a lot of them will never be completely “done”. The time investment from character creation to probable death in a lot of these games is short, with the exception of dwarf fortress. These aren't 30 hour epics, but there's no padding to the content. It is pure, undiluted gameplay. You'll die and curse, and restart again. I'll play Diablo 3 when it comes out, but I'll almost certainly play my roguelikes long after I've become bored with it.

Minecraft surpasses 10,000,000 users!

It seems that Minecraft has now been bought by over 2.6 million people! Ten million registered users are on its site. Minecraft is an amazing open world game that randomizes everything in the entire world as you walk through it; the hills, mountains, oceans, caverns, lava pits, snowy alps, low valleys, deserts, forests, etc. Everything is randomized!

Basically, the goal of the game is to gather different types of blocks (wood from trees, stone from the ground, dirt, etc.) and use these blocks to build a shelter... before nightfall. Nighttime is when the zombies, spiders, skeleton archers, skeleton archers riding spiders and many other creepy things come out to kill you... Including the infamous Creeper...

Creepers are the most annoying yet most original monster of them all... Basically, they exist to destroy what you've built. They explode when they come near you and they destroy all nearby blocks... Even if you spent five years building the Taj Mahal in Minecraft, a huge chunk will be taken out of it by one single Creeper... 

This is the face of evil... the Creeper...

Don't let them come near your base! Putting torches around will make sure they can't spawn... they only spawn in the dark. Monsters also spawn in the dark caverns, even during the day or in the darker shadows above ground... so always be aware.

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6322010.html