If You Build It, They Will Come

     Last fall, a friend of mine introduced me to a game that they found. They told me that it was a game in which you had to build during the day, and fight off monsters at night. It sounded pretty cool so I decided to check it out. I played around a little and I instantly became a fan. The game was Minecraft.

     This little indie game was pretty simple -- the graphics were not amazing, there was no story line -- but most importantly, it was fun. The game allows you to harvest blocks of various resources and build various tools and structures from the resources. At night, dangerous monsters including giant spiders and zombies come out to attack you. You often find yourself hiding out in a makeshift mud hut to avoid being killed.

     Possibly the most amazing part of the game is the generated world. No two Minecraft worlds are the same. The game randomly generates plains, mountain ranges, deserts, and vast oceans. All of these places are fully explorable, and can be quite the site.

     When the game first started up, nobody could have guessed that it would become so popular. Spread primarily by word of mouth and on blogs and YouTube, Minecraft rapidly became viral. In December of this year, Minecraft sold its one millionth copy.

     If nothing else, Minecraft serves as a signal to independent game makers that there is always a chance that your small game could be the next big thing.

     jmers593