SoCal Smackdown

All right, well SoCal Smackdown is happening, which is to say a convention close enough to home that I won't actually need to pay for a room there. Woot woot! It's cheap, it's a 4-day convention, and it's the West Coast qualifier for the Privateer Press Invitational! I'll be there with bells on. Cryxian...death bells? Something like that.

Minecraft

So I discovered a new game (by which I mean Robby discovered it and showed it to me) called Minecraft. It's a pretty freakin' rad concept for a game - specifically, that you are in a world that is 100% destructible, and also 100% constructible by you. In essence it's like Ultimate Legos on your computer. The entire world is broken up into cube blocks of different types - dirt blocks, stone blocks, sand blocks, etc - and you can break them and place them. In "creative mode" it's totally free form, and you can break and place as much as you like, but in survival mode you have to break blocks to put them in your inventory, where you can then place them again.

The game is currently in pre-release alpha form on the website, and you can pre-order the game for 9.95 Euro (about $12), which I did. I know that whenever this game is released, I'm going to love it, but more instantly gratifying is the fact that by pre-ordering you get access to the latest and greatest development mode he's got going, which is clipping along on its way to beta-testing phase. There's a crafting system, and increasingly complex tool system that requires you to build up your base and gain access to resources of varying sorts, a dynamic lighting system, and other cool things like doors, ladders, and other things to help you build a better zombie-proof base.

Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. It has zombies. The whole point of all the work you do to build a base and create defenses is so that you can survive monster attacks. Monsters only spawn in the dark, which means generally only underground and at night, and zombies and skeletons burst into flames when the sun hits them, so you find yourself with a scenario where you need to build defensive fortifications to survive day to day and night to night with unrelenting waves of baddies out for your flesh, all in a sandbox world where you build your own walls, shovels, pickaxes, swords, armor, and everything else. You can farm, raise animals, mine, and generally be exactly as sedentary or nomadic as you feel like.

Yeah, this game is going to be awesome. And it isn't even in beta yet.