I describe myself as an opportunistic gamer. If the game is in front of me and easy to play I’ll try it out, but my completion rates are abysmal. It isn’t that I have no interest in finishing a game from start to finish, it’s just that I can never find the time to finish a sixty (or more) hour play through in these seemingly endless games. 

Enter Minecraft, a game with no actually ending, or plot for that matter. I have never played Minecraft before because of how it is described (and the graphics) seems like no fun to me. I bounce right off of open world games, I suppose I like to have some story elements to pull me into a game. Yet, I feel compelled to try Minecraft, after all this game has been hugely successful with elementary school aged children and may still be when I start my teaching career. 

First hurdle, buy Minecraft. I was a bit surprised that this eleven year old game still cost forty CAD, but that’s Microsoft I guess? I made the mistake of trying to buy Minecraft from the website and kept cycling between the product page and the purchase page. I then realized that I should probably be buying the game from the app store on my PC, which worked perfectly.

Finally I was in and, just as I expected, I didn’t get it.

I has watched a YouTube video on how to get started in Minecraft so I did as they suggested and started punching trees and collecting wood to make my first set of tools. Why? To make more tools I think? I was happy for any place to start really. 

After wandering around and making some tools with my brand new crafting table all of which I made using the wood I got from punching trees, the sun went down. This is not a good thing because at night monsters and evil creatures try to kill your character in the game. I suppose this isn’t normally that bad but as a new player with no house to hide in during the night it was annoying to keep running away from things while I was trying to figure out what I was doing. When the day cycle started again I was able to look more at the crafting recipes I have access to. I’m not sure if it is normal to see the recipes I was able to look at or if this was something I turned on in game settings but it was actually nice to be able to see the different components I needed to find to advance my gear and make a building with doors and stairs and other house things. However, I wanted to do some exploring before I made anything else because I was thinking I might find a town or an abandoned town or something.
Next post I will be talking about my map exploration skills and what to do if first person view games give you motion sickness!