Lots of videogames let you build things, but hot new indie gem Minecraft adds an addictive twist: the constant threat that your elaborate creations will be destroyed by zombies, skeletons and other nasties in the dead of night.

Players manipulate the game’s low-res environment, terraforming the earth and painstakingly crafting structures block by block — anything from giant castles and roller coasters to replicas of the Swedish parliament building and obscene Mario statues.

But when the browser-based game’s ever-advancing world shifts from day to night every 10 minutes, Minecraft is overrun with killer monsters. In the scuffle, players’ creations can be destroyed. They can die and re-spawn without their loot, miles away from the structure they worked so hard to create.

Peril is ever-present in the game, which is so difficult and unforgiving that users have put together elaborate tutorials just to show newbies how to last a day.

Just as in real life, there’s no “Undo” in Minecraft.

“There are a few different types of enemy mobs in Survival mode: skeletons, creepers, spiders and zombies,” says Valerie Hutchins, a 26-year-old teacher from Mission Viejo, California, who built a massive version of the starship Enterprise in the game. “They add some threat because not only can they kill you, but the creepers explode and can damage things you build.”

The challenge of laboriously crafting a Minecraft structure while trying to stay alive and defend your work-in-progress is attracting new players at a rapid clip, drawing them in by letting them fulfill simple creative urges, then keeping them hooked by imperiling their increasingly grandiose creations. In FarmVille, failing to harvest your crops in a timely fashion might result in a field of withered strawberries, but your farmhouse isn’t about to be overrun by zombies.

Minecraft differs from the current crop of games so popular on Facebook in another key way: Building something in Minecraft takes far more creativity than simply pointing, clicking and acquiring. A stack of virtual Minecraft bricks might not seem impressive to an outsider, but anyone who’s played the game understands that it can take weeks or even months of work to assemble raw materials, followed by painstaking brick-by-brick work to create a magnificent structure.

“At the end of the day, as you look down at zombies from your mighty walls, you turn to inspect your castle and you know that you made something awesome,” said player Josh Fuesting in an e-mail to Wired.com. “You didn’t go down to the store and buy it, you didn’t beg 24 other people to help you slay a dragon and have it handed to you. You made yourself the tools, you dug yourself the stone, you hand-laid every individual block, and by God it’s the best castle in existence.”

That pride of ownership is tempered by the constant knowledge that everything could come crashing down at any moment.

“Minecraft taps into that childlike center of the brain that used to build forts out of couch cushions,” Fuesting said. “It’s very much about impressing others.”

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Authors: Chris Kohler

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