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Comment by rsaarelm | Hacker News Reader

The initial game with the day cycle and the monsters coming out at night is genius. Really taps into a primal light-and-shelter instinct. Also the light management with cave exploration is great.

However, once I figured out a wooden shack with a door built in a couple of minutes completely thwarts the AI enemies, I lost most interest. The setup is player against the world, but the world doesn't know how to do anything you'd need a huge stone castle or a massive trapped dungeon to fight against, so the great build system feels a bit pointless now.

Got to hand it to the author for making excellent core mechanics from a very simple set of ingredients. I hope he can keep up working on the style and figure out enemy mechanics you actually need serious constructions to fight against.

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... but the world doesn't know how to do anything you'd need a huge stone castle or a massive trapped dungeon to fight against...

Yet.

Yes, based on the author's plans, it looks like he's intending to add interesting in-game challenges:

Free building mode is fine and dandy, but for many people it will ultimately become boring once you've got it figured out. It's like playing a first person shooter in god mode, or giving yourself infinite funds in a strategy game.. a lack of challenge kills the fun. For survival mode, I'd rather make the game too difficult than too easy. That also means I'm going to have to include some way of winning the game (or some other climax) to prevent it becoming too exhausting.

http://www.minecraft.net/about.jsp

Yes a simple base is 100% safe, however if you spend 90% of your time exploring/mining caves (I do), you will find plenty of danger. That's really the point of the game--not building a base that's going to be attacked by mobs.

I get this. My problem was that I'm not feeling an incentive for even gathering the stuff, since survival is already guaranteed and there are no further in-game goals. I guess I need reasonably constant and threatening waves of attacking aliens to keep my "games are meaningless, I am wasting my life here" instincts from waking up.

You really need to set your own construction goals. I had the urge to build a big house in a nice location. The I wanted to protect it, so I built a low wall around it. Now I want to landscape the hill that it's on. Next I'll want to irrigate and start a farm....

Yeah, the survival aspect is the most appealing to me as well. Hopefully some more survival elements will make it in before the beta.

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