Video Game Wednesdays criteria include a) being electronic in nature and b) being a game

I love Minecraft. I’ve won contests building stuff in Minecraft. And I’ve never written about it here on EftM.
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In a nutshell, Minecraft is a sandbox survival game that involves building, harvesting, fighting, and mining. Lots and lots of mining.

Top – Starting out. Bottom – after collecting a few basic supplies.
The player appearance is my custom skin. The default skin isn’t nearly as cool.
With each new game (PC/Mac version), you’re dumped somewhere in a gigantic world (and by gigantic I mean you’ll never find the edges in a survival world) and forced to… well, survive. You’ll punch some trees for wood, kill some nearby animals for food, build a workbench, make your first wooden pick… and get to mining for stone and coal. Later, you’ll look for iron, gold, redstone, emeralds, and DIAMONDS. Somewhere in here, you’ll build a house (probably more like a dirt shack at first) with a bed, chests, a workbench and furnaces. You’ll pen up some animals, settle down, begin farming. You’ll keep the zombies out of your house and away from any local villages. You’ll probably get blown up by a creeper at least once, maybe fall into a ravine, maybe starve to death. But that’s okay! You’ll respawn at either the bed you last slept in or your original world spawn if you don’t have a bed in the world. (Unless you’re on Hardcore mode… then you’re dead permanently.) If you’ve played a bunch of games, and have gotten a little bored, there’s always different map types to play. Superflat is my personal favorite. There, you have no hills, no mining, no trees… just you and a giant expanse of grass.

Meet your new not!friend – the Creeper.
Finding and protecting villages becomes the most important thing to do. Or if running for your life isn’t your thing, there’s always good ol’ creative mode. Every block in the game, instant mining, and flight… build whatever you want, out of whatever you want.
And for those of you with an Xbox, Playstation, or just a tablet or phone, there are versions of Minecraft for those too.
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In the end, Minecraft is one of my favorite games. It’s happy, fun, and customizable. If you don’t like your player skin, you can look at places such as Skindex for a skin to use. (Those with computer graphics skills may choose to create their own skin from the provided template on the Minecraft website, like I did.) If you don’t like the graphics, check out Minecraft Resource Packs. (Again, those with graphics ability may choose to make their own. I like the original graphics, personally.) If you get really bored with the game, you can always mod it! (Yes, the creators are totally okay with this, as games are individual or individually-owned servers!)
The only bad thing is there’s very little way to try the game before you pay $27 USD for the computer version. Other than that, it’s a fun game for families (if you buy a copy for each person) to play together. I’d recommend it for 6 and up. There’s no blood, no profanity (no dialogue at all, actually,) and it’s pretty easy to learn and play.
The only crummy parts come with servers… chat is open there, and people do use profanity. Of course, giant group servers are totally optional, and you can always turn chat off.
In conclusion, just two more links – the Minecraft Wiki and the official Minecraft site.
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Have fun gaming!