Playing Games for Education!

Tag: video games

Starting again.

November 13, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Here I go again! I started again respawning at my house far far away from my dead body. I also realized that I got back to level one when I died so that was not the best way to find that out. So I had a choice to make, try and go back to find where I was when I died or forget about it and travel somewhere else. I ended up collecting a few things around my house, making a new set of armour and heading out to see if I could find the cave I died in. 

 

Surprisingly it worked! I was able to navigate back to where I had so unceremoniously been killed by a wizard but there was nothing there. No loot to be seen, all of the items I had been carrying were gone. One more thing I should have checked beforehand but I didn’t so I found out after being confused about the loot situation. Apparently the items you drop when you die will disappear if they are not collected promptly (you only have 5 minutes to get back) and I waited too long between plays so even though I found my cave camp, all my stuff was gone 🙁

 

Thoroughly annoyed I started going on an adventure to make a map! First I needed sugar cane for paper and I think I have the ingredients for a compass at my home base. I want to make a locator map so I have an easier time navigating around the world. So I started the journey to what I thought was towards my home base but ended up going wildly off course. But, I found what looks to be a pretty cool chasm with loads of materials and a lava flow at the bottom. I decided that my luck with daylight was running out and this place seemed cool so I built a place to stay the night and started digging.

 

 

After digging around for a while I emerged into daylight once again and start wandering around again, this time very very lost. The next day I ended up stumbling into a town with townspeople in it. This is the first town with people that I have found so it was a bit exciting for me. I ended up trading some leather for a emerald and ransacking the houses. Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably should have checked if that would have bad results before doing it, but it seems like the townsfolk are still friendly so I guess its okay.

 

 

Lastly, here is a video about Minecraft maps which inspired my gameplay last session.

 

Until next time!

Exploring and gettin’ lost

October 31, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Every time I start playing this game I sit down, and I think “Okay, what am I doing again?”. Maybe if I were playing on a more regular basis it would be easier to progress and look up more information that would help my game play, but time is a hot commodity for me during the school year. For this session I decided to head in one direction and explore whatever I came across. I crafted a compass so I could go in a mostly, straight line. Before I headed out, I visited my zombie spawner that I talked about in my last post. So, after killing all the zombies in there I took out all the candles I had left in there because I think it was impeding the spawn rate. Then it was off on my adventure!

 

I headed south to explore something that I saw lighting up the sky during the night cycle. It was not very far away and when I got there it looked like Minecraft lava so of course I jumped in! Then I died. So that was a fun learning experience. After respawning and returning to pick up all the loot that I dropped I found that the sun was setting, and I needed to find shelter. However, I wanted to stay in this area, so I started digging and building up a little shelter for myself to spend the night digging/mining in. Which turned out to be great because I was able to mine a bunch of the blocks around the lava but sometimes, they would explode so I should probably investigate what was happening with that.

 

Once it was day again, I continued exploring south, finding caves to hide in during night to avoid getting mobbed by baddies. I almost made it to a mountain but my time was nearly up and I wanted to head back to my home base because I had a bunch of new items I had no idea what to do with.

 

So, I made the journey back and I found a merchant along the way, but these people only want to trade for emeralds, and I have no idea how to get those. One more thing to add to the research list. Also, I found out that you can ride lamas, but I do not know how to control them, more research, hahaha! When I got home, I carved up all the pumpkins I had to decorate for the weekend, or forever who knows.

 

Happy Halloween!!

 

Until next time!

Starting my free inquiry project

September 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments

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! 

© 2026 Playing Games for Education!

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑