I wanted to write a little something about this game called Minecraft. It's still under development, but it is already showing great potential! :)It's basicly buildt up by alot of bricks. Kinda like lego. When you first start a level, it will autogenerate the terrain where you start. You will probably see alot of trees, waters, grassy lands, mountains, and if you are lucky you can also discover water and lava springs!
You can basicly do whatever you want with the terrain. You can dig up dirt, mine out big caves in the mountains, and build structures with the dirt and stone you have collected. The left screenshot shows a little entrance I have dug out of the dirt.The first thing you might want to do when you start out, is collecting some wood. You can do this by simply hammer at the tree with your first. You do this by holding in the left mouse button. This will take a few seconds since you don't have any tools, but as soon as you craft some, the time it takes to do so decreases significantly.
One of the fun parts of the game (in my oppinion), is to discover how stuff works. So I won't be going into any detail on how to do it all, but to give you a little hint... press "i" to enter your inventory. Here you have all the stuff you have collected, and a small crafting menu. To be able to craft bigger items, you have to build a crafting bench. I'll leave it to you do find out how :) To the left you can see I have opened the crafting bench. To make items, you just put in the materials you want to use in a specific pattern. I am making a iron pick axe here. You can make all tools with whatever materials you like, wood, stone, iron, and even diamond! (if you are lucky to come by some).
This next screenshot shows the furnace. Here you can melt ore in to metals, roast your pig meat, harden the stone you have collected, or make glass out of sand. You can use both wood and coal to fire up the furnace.
You get the pig meat from slaying pigs. Pigs and sheeps spawns when the sun is up. You get wool from sheeps. From the wool you can craft clothes, wich protects you a little bit from falls and enemies. Enemies spawns during the night. Some of them are very creepy! You'll know what I mean after playing a little xD
There are 2 versions of the game; Alpha and classic. Alpha is the most current up to date version (wich costs about 10 Euros), and classic is an early version where you only can create and destroy bricks. Minecraft Classic have multiplayer support. Multiplayer support in the Alpha version is the developers first priority now, only a few weeks away i think! That's probably when the game will go beta too, and cost twice the price. 
Notch - the one and only developer of the game, is constantly adding new features and fixes to the game. Almost every day you will see his progression with the game in his blog. Before Minecraft, Notch was working with Rolf on Wurm Online. I think he was helping out with the coding of the client. Anyways... I'm really looking forward to see how this game will turn out. I know that Notch have his eyes on Dwarf Fortress (a very advanced, but very fun game with ascii graphics), and I hope it will turn up something like that! :D Hopefully, multiplayer support will be out when I am back from my vacation!Here are a cupple of videos showing the infinite world (it generates itself as you walk) and a pretty neat roller coaster :D
