Return to the World of Minecraft

I slid open the cabinet door that our main family room television sits upon and saw our X-box sitting there in the dark. No one has turned that on in recent memory. My daughter and her friends like to hang out in the basement where we also have a sizeable television, so I thought they may like to play the X-box if I put it down there.

I unhooked it from the family room and moved it to the basement without much fanfare. I thought I might like to see if they notice it down there and do some exploring. The X-box is where my daughters and I would huddle around to play Minecraft several years ago. My kids are older now (college and high school), so I didn’t think Minecraft would appeal to them anymore, but we have other games they and their friends might like to play.

A weird thing happened. I got the system all plugged in, connected to wifi, and updated the system and games. Then I stopped to look at that Minecraft login. A bit about Minecraft. My girls and I have created in Minecraft for roughly 10 years. We goofed around with several different worlds and play styles, but we kept going back to a world called “Dad’s World.” I played countless hours with them and by myself building in my Dad’s World. If you start with the character in the original spawn point and walk in any particular path to the end of the road we built, it takes roughly 40 minutes for that to happen. All along that “paved path” you will encounter dungeons, towers, houses, boat rides, and villages that we all built. They even secretly built a mall to surprise me.

Like opening the wardrobe that leads to Narnia, I clicked on the Minecraft login and returned to “Dad’s World” for another visit. Memories, tasks, locations came rushing back to me, and yes, I have returned as the adventurer and builder that I am. In a matter of two hours of exploration and road building I discovered a villager/pirate village, a ruin with a broken portal, and I found a massive underground cavern while mining for resources. The absolute joy, creativity, and excitement returned. My girls and even my wife, will indulge me and look at some of the things that I have built recently. But, my mind came alive, and I have played many hours this summer. There is no Mr. Tumnus or Winter Queen or Aslan, but it is a magical world that I want to keep visiting. 

Dark Alliance: My first impressions

I just downloaded the Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance game to my Xbox a couple days after its release. Regular readers of Seeking Positivity in the Galaxy will know that I am a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan, but I am light on being skilled in today's video games.  Nevertheless, because of my excitement for Dungeons and Dragons adventures, here are my first impressions of the game.  

First, I am super excited about the options of characters available to play.  They are the characters made famous by R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden adventures, so of course, we are able to play Drizzt with his loyal, magical companion Guenhwyvar, Wulfgar, Cattie-Brie, and King Bruenor Battlehammer.  You know that I had to play Bruenor.  Where is Regis you might ask?  I suspect he will show up somewhere as an NPC, but that is just a hunch.  He is too important to just be left out. 

The game begins at Kelvin's Cairn in a safe spot where there is a merchant, a world map where you can designate locations to travel, a chest to collect treasure gathered in battle, and a teleportation platform that takes you to the locations designated on the map.  The game leaves you to figure out the mechanics of how to equip items, sell and purchase items, collect from the chest, choose locations on the map, but trying things, reading the screen, and pushing random buttons seem to achieve the basic functions of the game.  At least I was able to quickly find a battle tutorial on the map and give that a try.  

In the battle tutorial, the basic attacks are pretty easy to master.  The tutorial, however, gets a little crazy after that.  As the information of what different attacks do and how to do them pop up in a text box in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, you are still in active combat.  In the battle tutorial, you fight two goblins at a time and while they amusingly taunt you with threats and bottom slapping while asking if you like the scenery, you have to read the directions and, for someone like me who apparently cannot tell the left side of the controller from the right, figure out the button combinations and dodge the attacks all at once.  I am sure this is not a problem for this generation's videogamers, but for this guy, it wasn't impossible, but it took all the time I set aside to play to complete the tutorial and feel comfortable that I knew all the available combat maneuvers for Bruenor.  There are about 12 maneuvers.   

With all that, Dark Alliance is a fun combat-oriented game.  I have no doubt that there will be a story to follow, it is Dungeons and Dragons after all.  I look forward to actually entering combat in the story and seeing if I can apply the tutorial lessons with some of the really cool special attacks, or if I will just resort to the basic maneuvers of the game.  I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a fantasy combat game but especially recommend to anyone who has enjoyed the R.A. Salvatore books because we get to do some really cool combat with these loved characters.  I will give more impressions as I dive deeper into the game.  

For the D&D players out there, this game will be perfect for those game sessions that get canceled at the last minute and you need to blow off some D&D steam.  Log in, choose Bruenor and swing that axe at some pesky goblins.  

The Value of Minecraft

My wife bought me an X-Box One several years ago for Christmas.  She knows that I love to play games and that my X-Box 360 was becoming an antique in terms of video game systems go.  I don't typically play that many games, but when I do, I really dig into them.  I have spent hours with Star Wars Battlefront II and Skyrim, but the game that changed gaming in my house is Minecraft.  

I realize that Minecraft isn't a new game, but when I introduced it to my daughters where they were at the time 6 and 10 years old, it became the top activity in our house.  At first, we just spent a lot of time wandering around and trying to stay alive in the survival modes.  As we continued to play, I started noting that my girls were getting more creative and trying different things.  I found that in their creative worlds, where there isn't any danger of starvation, mobs (monsters), or falling into dangerous things like lava and where resources fully accessible, they were trying new things with different resources.  Since most games and activities they had played were very directed and basically laid the path out in front of them or they were told what to do by the game, the fact that exploration became the norm for them in Minecraft was nice to see.  

Early on all three of us would look for some inspiration for cool things to build, so I bought some Minecraft books.  It was pretty awesome when I would come in the room and they would be pouring over the books talking about different building designs or figuring out how to craft certain potions or trying to figure out what the best strategy is for defeating an Ender.  That was pretty heartwarming, and it made me realize the educational value to Minecraft.  My girls were seeking out external resources like books and YouTube videos.  They were even evaluating resources without really realizing the skills they were developing.  When searching for good YouTube content, they were comparing the quality of video and instruction.  They even said there were a few they came across that had a lot of swearing (I am sure there are more than just a few), so they decided that those might not be especially credible.  They said who would try to teach someone and swear at them while doing it?  That made sense to me, so I encouraged them to find more channels that fit their style.   

Both of my daughters were making science and math connections when trying to figure out which type of stones or other resources mixed best with others.  They were figuring area and volume when building houses and trying to figure out how many blocks they needed to mine in my survival world.  My youngest daughter sat down this week to play and wanted me to see what she was working on.  She had created an elaborate underground system of hallways. She was explaining to me how a sticky piston works and how she was applying it in a hallway to push a light block into view to illuminate a corridor.  Watching her experimentation and trial and error is satisfying, because not only is it fun to play and watch what she has built, but also because I am watching her thinking and learning process.   I also really appreciate the art and design applications that go in to the game too.  They both have played with the color of different bricks in building to create a certain aesthetic.  

Minecraft offers all of us the opportunity to develop collaboration skills as well.  My first realization of this was when the three of us were trying to figure out how to defeat a skeleton spawner.  We discussed strategy and we all shared our ideas on how to approach this task.  Of course, it usually played out where they would go running off leaving me to deal with all the skeletons, but at least it started with a plan.  We've also done some mining collaboration as we were working on some different projects.  We discussed who would go where to cut down trees and collect dark oak and birch tree wood while the other would head underground to find granite and someone else would start crafting tools and building materials.  

Besides being a fun game that offers us new experiences every time we start playing, it offers so many learning opportunities.  My favorite aspect of the game though is how it gives me a way to connect with my daughters.  It gives us a common language.  It also gives us experiences that we can be proud of in some cases and laugh together in other cases.  This has been an unexpected value of Minecraft.