Minecraft

**WIP**

***Minecraft*** is a 3D sandbox game created by Swedish game developer Markus "Notch" Persson. It is maintained by Mojang Studios, a part of Xbox Game Studios, which in turn is part of Microsoft.

From its creation, *Minecraft* was developed almost exclusively by Notch until Jens "Jeb" Bergensten started working with him and has since become head of its development. It features music by Daniel "C418" and paintings by Kristoffer Zetterstrand. Initially released as what is now known as *Minecraft: Legacy Edition* on May 17, 2009, the game was re-released as part of a massive overhaul on November 18, 2017. Since its release, *Minecraft* has expanded to consoles. On November 6, 2012, *Minecraft* and all of Mojang Studios' assets were acquired by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion.

*Minecraft* focuses on allowing the player to explore, interact with and modify a dynamically-generated map made of one-cubic-meter-sized blocks. In addition to blocks, the environment features plants, mobs and items. Some activities in the game include building, mining for ore, digging up various items from the archeological system, fighting hostile mobs and crafting new blocks and tools by gathering various resources found in the game. The game's open-ended model allows players to create structures, creations and artwork on various competitive or collaborative multiplayer servers or their single-player maps. Other features include redstone circuits for logic computations and remote actions, minecarts and tracks, and two mysterious dimensions, one called the Nether and the other being the Sky. A designated but completely optional goal of the game is to travel to multiple locations such as the Deep Dark, the Giant's Lair, the Wither Woods and the End and defeat various bosses such as the Warden, the Giant, the Witherstorm and the Ender Dragon. A tameable opposite of the Ender Dragon exists in the overworld and can be found in the Greater Cave biomes, being named the Cave Dragon respectively.

## Purchase and availability

*Desktop Edition* is the desktop version of the game, and can be bought from the Microsoft Store (Windows), aswell as Steam. Gift codes can be bought for others, for the same price as buying the game for oneself. The demo version can be played for free.

*Console Edition* is the console version of the game, and can be purchased through the Xbox Live Marketplace (Xbox).

*Minecraft: Legacy Edition* is an alternative desktop version of the game which consists of various compiled pre-1.0 revisions. It has since become free to download on Steam and the Microsoft Store since 2018.

## Gameplay

### Game modes

*Minecraft* has four basic game modes: Survival, Creative, Adventure, and Spectator. *Desktop Edition* has one additional game mode, Hardcore, although it is a per-world flag instead of a true gamemode.

#### Survival

In this mode, players must gather all their materials to build, craft items and tools and gain experience points. There is a health, hunger, and armor bar, an inventory, and also a oxygen bar when underwater, suffocating,‌ or in lava.‌ If a player runs out of hearts (health), the player dies and returns to the spawn point.

#### Creative

This mode is for creating structures and experimenting. The player has access to an infinite amount of almost all blocks and items available and can destroy them instantly. Players cannot die (except when falling into the Void in *Java Edition*), health is not a concern, and players can fly. The player has access to items not available in Survival mode, such as spawn eggs.

#### Adventure

Players can interact with objects such as levers and buttons, and can interact with mobs. However, they can break blocks only with certain tools, and place only certain blocks, as determined by the designer. This mode is good for adventure maps.

#### Hardcore

In this mode, which plays in the same way as Survival mode, the difficulty level is permanently set to "Hard", and the player does not respawn after dying. After death, the player cannot interact with the world again and must either delete the map or permanently switch to Spectator mode. Hardcore is not technically a game mode as it cannot be enabled with the `/gamemode` command.

#### Spectator

When in Spectator mode, players can clip through blocks and fly freely. The player can't interact with blocks, entities or their inventory.

On *Desktop Edition*, the player can enter the perspective of other entities by left-clicking on them, and are invisible to all players and mobs except for other spectators. When in third-person mode, a player appears as a transparent floating head. The player can use the scroll wheel to adjust the flying speed, unlike flying in Creative mode.