Minecraft

Minecraft is a first-person sandbox indie game for the PC developed and published by Mojang and created by Markus "Notch" Persson. It was originally written in Java by Persson and now is by his company, Mojang. It was released on May 17, 2009 with a Beta version released December 20, 2010. The full version was released on November 18, 2011, during an event known as Minecon, which focused entirely on the game. The game will be available on iOS and Android platforms. The Android version will be temporarily exclusive to the Xperia Play. A Xbox 360 version with Kinect support is also in development by 4J Studios, and is planned to be released sometime in Spring 2012.
==Gameplay==
The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made up of cubical blocks arranged in a fixed grid pattern, that represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, tree trunks, etc. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material "blocks" and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions. The game has only one goal, to go into a realm called The End and defeat a large boss known as the Enderdragon. After the boss is defeated however, the game does not end, as Minecraft lasts forever.
Minecraft has two currently available variants, the full version and Classic, both with single-player and multiplayer options. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The Classic was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks.
Classic survival mode served as the base for development of single-player non-free Indev ("In Development"), and later non-free Infdev ("Infinite Development") versions, each expanding the number of features. Indev and Infdev were later replaced by the non-free Alpha variant, which continued to add features to the game, including multiplayer mode. As of December 20, 2010, the game entered into Beta. It went through many updates in Beta the biggest two being Beta 1.2, known as the "Halloween Update" (which came out with new blocks and a hell-like world called The Nether) and Beta 1.8, which was known as the "Adventure Update" (and came out with generated structures such as ravines and abandoned mineshafts, and new mobs, such as the Enderman), and was finally released on November 18, 2011. However, Notch is still adding updates to the game, and is frequently releasing test versions of the full release updates known as "Weekly Snapshots."
Minecraft includes music by Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld. For multiplayer games, servers are currently hosted by individual players or groups; there are no "official" Minecraft servers yet, the only way to connect to a server is entering the hostname or IP address in-game. There are no substantive differences between multiplayer and singleplayer Minecraft, other than the number of players in a world.
==Ports==
===Minecraft — Pocket Edition===
Minecraft-Pocket Edition is a portable version of Minecraft for the Xperia PLAY, Android, and all iOS devices. It was released on August 16, 2011 for the Xperia PLAY, October 7, 2011 for the Android, and November 17, 2011 (one day before the full release) on iOS devices.
Pocket Edition's worlds look like Beta worlds, however, they are limited in size and all very small like Classic, Survival Test, and Indev's worlds. Also, the game is currently only in Creative mode, however, Survival mode will be added in a later update. There are no mobs either, but those too will be added in a future update. The update with Survival mode and mobs was supposed to be released on February 8, 2011, but was delayed due to a few bugs, and is planned to be released in late February 2011.
Pocket Edition also has multiplayer, but it is only local Wi-Fi, which means the player can only play multiplayer with someone else nearby who also has the game. It is unknown if online multiplayer will be added.
Category:Games released on the Xbox 360
Category:Games released for PC
Category:Games released in 2011