Minecraft is an open world
game that has no specific goals for the player to accomplish, allowing
players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The core gameplay revolves around breaking and placing blocks. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes—arranged in a fixed grid pattern and representing different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While players can move freely across the world, objects can only be placed at fixed locations on the grid. Players can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere, thus allowing for various constructions. Minecraft features two alternate dimensions besides the main world—the Nether and The End. The Nether is a hell-like dimension accessed via player-built portals that contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances in the overworld. The End is a barren land in which a boss dragon called the Ender Dragon dwells. Killing the dragon cues the game's ending credits. Players are then allowed to teleport back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and will receive "The End" achievement. There is also a second boss called "The Wither", which upon defeat drops a specific material needed to build a placeable beacon that can enhance certain abilities of all nearby players. Two mini-bosses, the Guardian and Elder Guardian, have been added in the 1.8 update of Minecraft.
The game primarily consists of four game modes: survival, creative, adventure, and spectator. It also has a changeable difficulty system of four levels; the easiest difficulty (peaceful) removes any hostile creatures that spawn. It also san be played in Multiplayer mode.
SURVIVAL MODE
In this mode, players have to gather natural resources (such as wood and stone) found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items.
Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas in a
certain radius of the character, requiring the player to build a shelter
at night. The mode also features a health bar
which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, drowning, falling
into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a
hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game,
except in "Peaceful" difficulty, in which the hunger bar does not
drain. There are a wide variety of items that players can craft in Minecraft.Players can craft armor, which can help mitigate damage from attacks, while weapons such as swords can be crafted to kill enemies and other animals more easily. Players may acquire resources to craft tools, such as weapons, armor, food, and other items. By acquiring better resources, players can craft more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores, respectively; tools made of iron perform their tasks more quickly than tools made of stone or wood and can be used more heavily before they break. Players may also trade goods with villager mobs through a bartering system involving trading emeralds for different goods. The game has an inventory system, and players can carry a limited number of items. Upon dying, items in the players' inventories are dropped, and players re-spawn at the current spawn point, which is set by default where players begin the game, but can be reset if players sleep in a bed. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn. Players may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. Players may also play in hardcore mode, this being a variant of survival mode that differs primarily in the game being locked to the hardest gameplay setting as well as featuring permadeath; upon players' death, their world is deleted.
CREATIVE MODE
In creative mode, players have access to all of the resources and items
in the game through the inventory menu (E), and can place or remove them
instantly.
Players, who are able to fly freely around the game world, do not take
environmental or mob damage, and are not affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating large projects.
SPECTATOR MODE
Spectator mode allows players to fly around through blocks and watch
game play without interacting. It is also possible to view from the
point of view of another player or creature. Some things may look
different from another creature's point of view.
ADVENTURE MODE
Adventure mode was added to Minecraft in version 1.3; it was designed specifically so that players could experience user crafted custom maps and adventures.
Gameplay is similar to survival mode but introduces various player
restrictions, which can be applied to the game world by the creator of
the map. This is so that players can obtain the required items and
experience adventures in the way that the mapmaker intended.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer on Minecraft is available through player-hosted servers and enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. Players can run their own servers or use a hosting provider.