Minecraft

Minecraft is a 2011 sandbox game made and published by Mojang Studios. More than 350 million copies of the game have been sold as of 2025. This makes it the best-selling video game of all time. It has been ported to multiple other platforms, including mobile devices and other video game consoles.

In Minecraft, players explore an open world filled with many 3D items. All of these items are made of cubes called "blocks," and all blocks can be placed down and most items can be used. These include basic terrain and resources such as dirt, stone, wood, and sand. There are also items the player can use, such as crafting tables, furnaces, blast furnaces, looms, and stonecutters among others. Players can use these to make new items such as tools and armor, as well as different kinds of blocks. Players can then build structures using these blocks, such as buildings, statues, pixel art, and more.

Originally made by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language, it started being made over the span of two years, from 17 May 2009 to 18 November 2011. Later, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten had control over the game and continuing development following its full release in 2011. In 2014, Minecraft was then purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Minecraft has three main versions: Java Edition, Bedrock Edition, and Education Edition. Java Edition is the first version of Minecraft made, but Bedrock Edition is now used more due to it being multi-platform. Bedrock Edition and Education Edition are written in C++, and Java Edition is written in Java. And Legacy Console was for consoles like for the PlayStation or for the Xbox 360.

Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 350 million copies sold and 140 million monthly players. And received very positive reviews. Minecraft has a large community. It has a lot of user-generated content (things made by players) like mods, servers, skins, resource packs, and custom maps, which add new gameplay features and game modes to the base game. And the "Minecraft franchise" includes multiple spin-off games and a movie.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, players are put in a random location in the game world. They can begin breaking blocks to collect resources, such as wood, dirt, etc. which can be used later in the game. Players can use resources to make new tools, such as pickaxes, which let the player gather stone in the caves that they find. Different resources require different tools to collect them. For example, diamonds can only be collected with an iron pickaxe, or one of a better quality.

The game world is mostly endless. As players explore it, the game makes new sections of the world using procedural generation. The game generates different kinds of terrain in biomes. Different biomes have different blocks in them. For example, a taiga biome will have lots of spruce trees and snow, whereas a plains biome will have lots of grass. The player can also find different structures in the world, like mountains and villages.

The game has non-player characters called "mobs" (short for mobile entity). There are many mobs in Minecraft. Some are real-life animals, like cows, pigs, and sheep. Some are based on monsters, such as zombies or skeletons. There are also some which do not exist in the real world in any way, and are unique to Minecraft, such as Creepers, Piglins, and Endermen. Each mob has different things it can do. For example, players can kill cows to get leather, which can make items, and beef, which can be cooked to make food. The Creeper, a hostile mob (meaning it tries to attack the player), will move close to the player and then explode, which usually causes enough damage to kill the player.

Minecraft has very few goals. Players can choose how they want to play. They can choose to fight bosses, such as the Wither and the Ender Dragon, or choose to explore the world and build. If the player defeats the Ender Dragon, they can see the credits of the game. Minecraft also has lots of Achievements called "advancements". These can range from simple things like sleeping in a bed for the first time, to complex things like discovering every biome in the game. Both boss fights and advancements are optional.

In addition to the default dimension the player starts in (called the "Overworld"), there are also two other dimensions in Minecraft - the Nether and the End. Both of these can be accessed with special portals. The player can make Nether portals using obsidian and flint and steel, but End portals have to be found in strongholds. While it is not necessary to go to these dimensions, they have many unique items and enemies not found in the Overworld:

The Nether is a dangerous, hell-like world with lava, fire, and unique monsters like Ghasts and Piglins. You can find special blocks and resources there, like Nether Quartz Ore and Nether Brick.

The End is a dark world made of floating islands. The End is the home of the Ender Dragon, a giant boss monster. The Ender Dragon must be fought and defeated in the End. After beating the dragon, the player can choose to go back to the Overworld, or go to the End Islands to find End cities. These tall towers have valuable loot, including rare items and strong enchanted gear like armor and tools, but they are guarded by enemies called Shulkers. You can find Elytra, special wings for gliding, only in End Ships that sometimes appear near End Cities.

Mobs

Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, can be hunted for food and crafting materials. They spawn in the day, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, creepers, skeletons, endermen, and zombies—spawn during night or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies, skeletons and drowned (underwater versions of zombies), burn under the sun if they have nothing on their head, such as armour. Other creatures in Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively.

Game modes

Survival mode

In survival mode, players can gather resources found in the world to make lots of different items. Some of the items players can make include new blocks, tools, and armor. For example, players can turn wood into planks at the start of the game, which lets them make lots of things, like crafting tables and tools. Players can also place down these planks to build things, like houses. and other structures.

Players have a health bar and a hunger bar in this mode. The health bar is shown as 10 hearts, and the hunger bar is shown as 10 steaks. Each heart and steak are worth two health points and two hunger points, respectively. The health bar depletes when players get attacked by monsters, lose all of their air underwater, walk into lava or cacti, fall from a high place, fall into the void, or if their hunger bar is depleted completely. Players can heal by staying still, drinking healing potions, and/or if they have a full hunger bar. Players will lose hunger by walking, sprinting and jumping too much. If they are low on hunger, they will not be able to sprint. They can fill their hunger bar by eating food.

During the night, monsters come out to fight the player, but players can build a house to protect themselves from these monsters. If a player sleeps in a bed, they can skip the night, and go directly to the next day. However, they are unable to sleep if there are monsters near the bed.

Players can only carry a certain number of items at any time, by holding them in their inventory. If the player dies, they drop their items, unless they have turned on Keep Inventory. Players can get their items back if they can find them before they disappear. They can then respawn, which sends them back to their spawn point, or the place they started the game at. Players can change their spawn point using items like beds. For example, a player can put a bed in their house to respawn there, and in the Nether players can use a unique block called a respawn anchor to respawn there.