Now you can play some old-school Minecraft in your browser.
Minecraft, a game developed by a disembodied spirit and dropped here on Earth under mysterious circumstances, was once the game people asked me about when I told them what my job is. “Oh you play games?” they’d ask. “Do you know about Minecraft?” Now that That Game is Fortnite, it can be hard to remember how all-encompassing and influential Minecraft was. Playing Minecraft Classic, which is now available to play in your browser, helped me remember where that magic once came from.
Minecraft Classic only offers eight blocks to build with, and is in Creative mode by default, because that is the only option. You’re not going to be fighting Creepers or Zombies in this game. Instead, you can build and mine. Those two mechanics aren’t all that different in Classic than what they are now. Still, seeing the game stripped of all the biomes, mobs, and complicated recipes reminded me how compelling those two core mechanics are. Every time I dug downward into some rock and found a neat cave or a new type of block, it was still exciting, even if there wasn’t much to do with it. The novelty of each world being created just for you, hiding secrets within, was enough.