Minecraft

Minecraft is a construction sandbox game where players use simple blocks in a 3D environment to create structures and more generally to alter the players environment. The game is being developed by Markus Persson, also known as Notch, and is currently in the alpha stage of development. Despite this, the latest stable version is currently free to play while the latest unstable version requires a user to pre-order the game.

Gameplay
Minecraft features multiple game modes, all based around changing the player's environment by placing or removing pieces blocks in the world.

Survival Mode
Survival is the featured game mode in Minecraft where players attempt to survive against monsters that try to hurt them. The player has health, can wear armor, wield weapons, carry items, and has a score based on enemies killed. Survival mode is currently single player only, but is planned to expand to multiplayer before beta begins.

"Indev" and "Infdev" are separate game clients for survival mode that are more recently updated and require pre-order to play.

Creative Mode
In creative mode a player plays alone or with others on a server to make constructions out of blocks. There is a larger variety of block-types to use than in survival mode and they are easier to create and destroy as well. It is currently the only mode with multiplayer.

Development
The developer of Minecraft, Markus Persson, began programming computers at the age of seven. His father had purchased a Commodore 128 home computer and began subscribing to a computer magazine which featured type-in programs. Following experimentation with the code of these programs, Persson produced his first game at the age of eight, a text adventure.

Persson discovered a game called Infiniminer and played with other forum users of TIGSource, the website of independent game developer Derek Yu. Persson had recently quit his job as a game developer in order to concentrate on independent development; his desire to change and expand on Infiniminer resulted in the development of Minecraft. The developer did have other ideas for video games, but these would have required extended periods of development to create.