Minecraft is the biggest (paid) gaming sensation of the last decade, racking up more than 100 million downloads across platforms and still growing in popularity after several years. It’s hugely popular with young kids, has a vibrant fan community, and even is used in classrooms for educational purposes. And now you can play it on the Apple TV.
Released right before Christmas, Minecraft: Apple TV Edition is essentially a big-screen conversion of the Minecraft: Pocket Edition you might know well from iPhone and iPad. It’s not only the biggest game to hit the Apple TV to date, but also simultaneously the highest-profile game on the device to require a gamepad—you won’t be able to play with the Siri Remote. And that’s for the best, because it means that Minecraft isn’t diminished in this new incarnation.
Block by block
Minecraft on Apple TV offers essentially the same experience as Pocket Edition, which itself follows the same core tenets as the original Minecraft on Mac and PC: it’s all about little blocks. Like a modern-day digital take on LEGO, you’ll wield pixelated blocks of all sorts—dirt, sand, iron ore, and much more—in your charmingly jagged world. You can use them to build a house, a city, a detailed re-creation of the Millennium Falcon… or anything else, really.
You’ll also bash them to bits as you dig into the ground and mountains, exploring beneath the surface to mine all sorts of minerals. And then you’ll craft, of course, using the myriad blocks you’ve accumulated to build swords, shovels, pickaxes, fishing rods, and other tools to help you in the lo-fi wilds. As ever, Minecraft is about as loosely structured as a game can be. You’re dropped into a world with no tutorial, a minimal on-screen interface, and no objectives or storyline. It’s up to you to find meaning and fun in each randomly generated world you enter.
Be friendly with the blocky wildlife… or punch them until they turn into beef and leather.
Luckily, that’s not difficult: the allure of freeform, trial-and-error exploration reveals surprises and secrets along the way, especially as you learn the ropes in the Survival mode, and there’s real joy in forging your own adventure in the face of unexpected challenge. With vicious block monsters appearing every night, you’ll need to utilize the resources around you to build shelter, craft better tools, and ultimately find your way to the final realm, called The End.
Meanwhile, in Creative Mode, you have all of the tools, blocks, and resources ready in your arsenal, and you can even soar through the air—all of which allows you to build massive structures and create your own experiences along the way. And you can also connect to online servers for multiplayer in either mode, and play with fellow fan-made maps and makeshift minigames.
The Apple TV Edition comes with a pretty cool bonus bundle of Christmas content right now, even if its immediate relevance has passed.
Playing Minecraft with a proper gamepad is so much better than using virtual buttons on your iPhone or iPad. While that’s adequate enough, there’s nothing quite like the steady, tactile sensation of feeling an analog stick and buttons under your thumbs, not to mention having an unencumbered view of the game on your TV. I’m using the SteelSeries Nimbus ($50), which is still the best of the bunch with Apple TV and iOS MFi gamepads, and Minecraft plays as well here as it does on other consoles and computers. While it’ll take a fairly sizable investment to start playing, it’s the only option that makes sense on the Apple TV: trying to comfortably squeeze all of the controls onto the limited Siri Remote seems an impossible task.
Double up?
Minecraft: Apple TV Edition is almost identical to Pocket Edition in nearly every respect. It has the same content as the recent 1.0 release of Pocket Edition, which also supports gamepads. However, the Apple TV Edition lacks a couple of features right now: support for Realms, the official service for setting up and running private Minecraft servers, as well the ability to sign into Xbox Live and add friends via the service. Both of those features are in development, which is great, but it’s no surprise that the Apple TV Edition’s $20 price tag is throwing some Pocket Edition owners for a loop.
Dig into the earth to find rare minerals. Ooh, redstone (and lava, too)!
While many purchased iOS games are then free to download on Apple TV, Minecraft: Apple TV Edition has its own $20 price tag that is separate from Pocket Edition’s paltry $7 charge. Seven bucks for Minecraft on your iPhone is a steal, while $20 for a home console version feels spot-on. However, given that you’re essentially getting a blown-up version of Pocket Edition, it seems strange that you’re asked to pay again, not to mention at a much higher price.
It’s a matter of Mojang and Microsoft following their usual playbook here, in which console versions of Minecraft cost $20, while Apple’s shared platform could allow for one purchase to cover iOS and Apple TV versions alike. But that’s their choice to make, and now it’s yours too. At least early buyers get a free add-on pack bundle that brings in a Christmas-themed environment, costumes, and other small digital goodies.
Connect to online servers to play with friends or other random fans.
The Mac version is a bit more feature rich than this one (and is $27 by comparison), but playing on a TV with a gamepad is definitely preferable to using an iOS device. If you or your kids are still over the moon about Minecraft—or haven’t played and think it could be up your alley—then this may be $20 very well spent. Minecraft is infinitely replayable and Mojang keeps expanding its feature set, while online servers offer further modes and experiences. On the other hand, if you have Pocket Edition and are either perfectly content with it or don’t play much anymore, then there’s little point in buying the same game again at three times the cost.
Bottom line
Minecraft shines on the Apple TV, as playing on a big screen with a comfortable controller is even more alluring than playing on your iPhone or iPad—and it’s about on par with the Mac version in terms of overall experience. However, the price discrepancy with the Pocket Edition and need to buy this version separately may throw some fans for a loop.
No details or release date were announced. On Nintendo’s official site, Minecraft is simply described as: “Create your very own game world to explore, build and conquer. When night falls the monsters appear, so ensure you’ve made yourself a shelter before they arrive. Make it through the night and the world is only limited by your imagination you choose what you want to make or what to do.”
Switch continues Minecraft’s near-ubiquity on gaming consoles, following versions for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, and more. More than 106 million copies of Minecraft had been sold as of last year, placing it among the best-selling games of all time.
I’m a relative newcomer to the world of Minecraft. My sons have played it for years now, but I really just started getting into it myself this last summer. My younger son put me through a kind of boot camp where I had to put in sixty hours of Minecraft in about ten days…and by the end of that, I loved it. I’m not a pro, in fact I’m still a “noob” according to the kids. But I dig it. (get it?!) Sometimes it takes a greater vision to see the real potential of a building tool, and that’s what you get in No Starch Press’s new book, “Beautiful Minecraft.”
The hardcover book is a collection of dozens of different builds from James Delaney and his colleagues at BlockWorks — a consortium of Minecraft builders that collaborate on large scale projects. They run the gamut from real world architecture to science fiction to sculpture, and each page is astounding, with details you’ll be exploring for hours. There are nine chapters in “Beautiful Minecraft” —
Fantasy Worlds
The Builds of Tomorrow
More Than a Game
Sculptures
Building a Place in the World
Mechanical Marvels
Re-creations
Playful Design
Landscapes
Each has favorite builds for me; Mats Heiberg’s “Babel” is a particular favorite. The gothic-inspired ornate island palace/cathedral/magical realm is beautiful in scope and detail. We don’t get much information about the builds — evidently “Babel” was all Heiberg working alone, and comprises 8 million blocks and took 31 days to build. Which is insane. But the results speak for themselves.
Something it’s difficult to get a sense of with the builds is the scale of them — most of these aren’t built on a conventional Minecraft scale (scaled to the size of Steve and the Creepers), but they use the blocks as smaller pieces to build structures of greater scope.
The spaceships and stations are another favorite section in the book — seeing how visions of the future could be interpreted in Minecraft is something that I hadn’t even considered while building my own little worlds. Again, the scale of these is difficult to comprehend, but they’re stunning in the complexity of their design.
I’m not sure what I was expecting with “Beautiful Minecraft” — it makes a good companion piece to some of No Starch’s other books in a “Beautiful LEGO” series. They both bring attention to the use of these children’s games and toys as a legitimate art form. Just as Nathan Sawaya’s LEGO sculptures have made people see the potential in plastic bricks, the artists (and they are artists) in “Beautiful Minecraft” make an argument for how this highly pixelated game can be used as a medium.
My one issue with the book is that there isn’t enough text from the builders. There are a few short pages explaining some of the process, but not much about the inspiration behind the projects. There aren’t “artist statements” that I feel would be illuminating, especially to some of the more abstract pieces. The bits we do get are so interesting — the difference between creating a sculpture in Minecraft (above) and sculpting in stone, for example. I would like to see more of that.
If you’re interested in Minecraft (possibly), or you have kids who are (almost certainly), “Beautiful Minecraft” is a great read. It’s one that I’ve pored over multiple times, coming away with ideasfor how to build, what to build, and consider my own miserable lack of Minecraft skills. At least with “Beautiful Minecraft,” I know where to look for inspiration.
Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo reveals new Fire Emblem games, the PlayStation 4 wins December, and we look at the upcoming strategy game Halo Wars 2.
Somewhere in an alternate universe there’s a Dreamcast 2 and, presumably, a Dreamcast 3. And, in that alternate universe, our doppelgangers are able to play Minecraft on their console of choice. But for us, stuck here in this hellish timeline, we’ll have to settle with a clever clone for the original Dreamcast, now available for free online.
Over at DCEmulation, forum member gameblabla has taken it upon himself to port a Minecraft clone called Crafti designed for a high-end Texas Instruments calculator onto a vintage Dreamcast. And apparently it works like a charm, albeit a charm without enemies or sound of any kind.
Tom Charnock, founder of The Dreamcast Junkyard, has been to this promised land and returned with a first-hand account.
Tom Charnock/Crafti
“Controls take a little getting used to,” Tom wrote, “but once sussed, Crafti is about as close to the real Minecraft as you’re likely to get on a Dreamcast. Movement is handled through the D-pad, looking on the analogue and the face buttons allow you to place or erase blocks in the world. You can also jump, and there’s an action button for opening doors and pressing switches.
“After 10 minutes playing with Crafti I had already built myself a nice little house, complete with a fireplace and a bookshelf full of leather-bound books. The smell of rich mahogany also wafted through the structure.”
Thanks to Charnock for the tip. We’ve included a few of his screenshots above.
You too can download and play Crafti right now. It’s available for free as an image for CDs and SD flash memory.
Focus Home Interactive is cornering the market on dark role-playing games from Europe.
Today, the publisher announced a deal with White Wolf Publishing for Werewolf: The Apocalypse for PC and consoles. The Cyanide studio (makers of Styx: Master of Shadows, Blood Bowl, and the upcoming Call of Cthulhu RPG) will develop the adaptation of the pen-and-paper game. Focus Home is known for RPGs and strategy games, and Werewolf is a good fit for its product portfolio.
Werewolf is part of White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” universe, which also consists of Vampire: The Masquerade (its 2004 PC adaptation is a cult-classic) and Mage: Ascension. The setting is a twist on modern times, where the supernatural lurks in a world torn by corruption, the divide between the rich and the poor, and devious men and women. You play as a werewolf (a Garou, which comes from the French Loup-garou), and you fight against civilization and “supernatural corruption.”
“The World of Darkness has always attracted creatives with a strong passion for telling dark and immersive stories. So to work closely with the great talent at Focus Home and Cyanide exploring the savage Werewolves of this universe is an absolutely fantastic experience for us at White Wolf, and we are more than excited to see this great and highly relevant IP realized in a video game”, said Tobias Sjögren, chief executive officer of White Wolf.
