Speculation Friday: Minecraft…2?

I love Minecraft, you love Minecraft, and probably almost anyone you knows who has tried Minecraft, loves it. It’s a game that run on imagination, plopping you into the middle of nowhere and just saying go. Over the years, Minecraft has really expanded, adding things like villages and strongholds, endermen and The End, and it seems like everyday people are making more and more elaborate creations ranging from roller coasters to giant cities and redstone computers. It is this kind of stuff that makes Minecraft such a wonderful game.

But what if there was a Minecraft….2?

A sequel, something that upped the stakes and instead of just giving us a microupdate where only a few aspects of the game had changed, this sequel changed the game completely. With how Mojang seems to manage their game, I doubt this will ever happen, but someday, years from now, who knows? Things might change. What would this hypothetical sequel entail? Perhaps while the current Minecraft will always be available, this new Minecraft could sell at full retail price and so will be somehow catered to only those hardcore fans who wish for something bigger, grander, and prettier.

1) VehicleCraft and a Grander World

So let’s start with the obvious thing a Minecraft 2 would need. More stuff to find. I’m talking ancient ruins, cities full of people, mountain villages, that kind of stuff. But one thing I guess that always irks me about the current Minecraft is that I love building ships, but the best I can ever get are models. You know, things that just sit there and do nothing. Some friends and I once built this giant airship with cannons and even rigged a device to light and drop a ton of TNT. But instead of leaving a long streak of destruction in our wake, the best we could do is make a fake village below us and bomb that over and over again.

I’ve also seen the masterfully done airships and waterships done by other people on YouTube. The only thing that would make them better is if they could move. Minecraft nowadays is often being employed as a tool for education, well what better way to teach people about operating and old timey ship than building them an old timey ship and showing them how to run it while it sailed across the ocean. Alternatively, ADVENTURE!

See this? I want to explore the world with this.

Now I know there have been mods out there to make planes and cars, etc. I think most of them operate by just making those things craftable objects. But of course I’m talking about being able to make giant things move. How could this be done? Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure about how all the Minecraft programming works, but if I were to just spout random ideas off the top of my head, I would have to say that there could be several new objects like a steering mechanisms and engines that all worked through redstone. Then to make sure your ship maintained shame, you could put some kind of string like object along the outside of the ship and attach them to the engine blocks. Then everything within them would be counted as part of the vehicle and move as one.

2) SpaceCraft and a Rounder World

Lately, I’ve been on a bit of space obsession, after playing Endless Space and two Star Wars games. Which is why I ask: Why should MineCraft be about just one world? Why not be about an entire universe? Building off of the vehicle idea, why not let players build a spaceship and fly off into the stars. Minecraft is usually about going down, which makes sense given its name. But some players like myself, like to go up and were pretty excited when the maximum height ceiling was increased. Still, what other games out there let you travel freely through space in a 3D environment. It could be like, the best Star Trek game ever made.

Of course, this would also mean that world’s of Minecraft would have to be changed, if everything is to remain seamless. Perhaps one good thing about this idea being for a sequel is that it counts as a totally different game, so changes would be expected. What I’m talking about is making the world round. If space and other planets are involved, then there wouldn’t be much need for planet that is infinitely long and flat. Instead of hitting bedrock, players could literally dig to the other side of the planet and experience some weird effects that we would never even dream to experience, like a massive gravity shift when you pass the core. Alternatively, lots of lava could be there to prevent players from digging through the world but where is the fun in that?

But once players tire of their world, they could simply pack their things and some supplies, build a rocket ship that runs on coal and blast off into outer space where they would have to face brand new challenges like the airless vacuum of space (better make sure there are no holes in your rocket ship), avoiding the gravitational pull of the sun, and chestbursters.

Always got to watch out for chestbursters.

Now that I think of it actually, Mojang wouldn’t need to take away the flat infinite world of the original just to add space in. It could be treated like going to the Nether. Sure, take off wouldn’t be as much fun but once you have built your rocket you can activate a button and just meet with a loading screen before being in space.

3) PrettyCraft and a Bigger Adventure

Minecraft isn’t the prettiest game in the world. Even with various mods on that affect textures and lighting, the blocky aesthetic will keep it lightyears away from looking like, oh, Skyrim. But after having played both games, a lot, I have to say, the adventure always feels much more grander and epic in Skyrim, partly due to the graphical presentation of the world and if any reason warranted a full retail price sequel to Minecraft, is Minecraft but with really pretty graphics.

Yes please.

This in itself would probably be a pretty daunting challenge for an indie developer like Mojang and one of the great things about Minecraft’s art style is that any modern computer can run it (I assume). But computers are getting more powerful, Minecraft has already hit the consoles which are also getting more powerful, so who is to say that in the next 5 years or so, there couldn’t be a very pretty Minecraft?

Now, the design of the game doesn’t necessarily have to change. The beauty of making everything blocks is that it keeps things really simple for players to navigate and build. Maybe it could be just the natural world starts off looking a certain way, and then when you place blocks they mesh to fit the biome they are in. Maybe when you get materials, they start off as “raw” that would do that, but you can easily craft them into different materials for buildings and what not. Other possibilities could include removing the ability for a player to simply build a tree and chopping down wood creates actual logs instead of a wood block. The game would probably have to totally rebuilt, but hey, that’s why it’s Minecraft 2.

4) CustomeCraft and the Wii U

Of course, Minecraft on the Wii U would be pretty awesome, but you know, the Wii U’s tablet controller has already been shown off to let people draw stuff even on in game models. With that said, I know one of the cool things about texture mods is that it creates a unique experience and lets players see the world in a different way. Thing can be darker, creepier, or just more light hearted.

But what if there was a way where everything in Minecraft would be easily modded by everyone? Maybe not on a giant scale like changing game code, but just being able to take a bunch of block and draw on them as you wish. I know one problem I’ve encountered in my many attempts to make Zelda like dungeons in the game is that when you want to put fine details in the game, you can’t. For example, I wanted statues, but because everything is made of blocks, it doesn’t really come across. That’s why I think it would be cool to let players just take out the stylus and draw a picture on the blocks. I dunno, it’s just one of those cool ideas that I think should be implemented.

Well, those are my ideas for a Minecraft 2. It is kind of hard to think about what major changes that game could make when really, the game is already one of the biggest games around.