Few games have had the impact of Minecraft (none, actually). Not only has it become an internet sensation, giving birth to gaming on YouTube, but it is also the best-selling game of all time, second only to Tetris. As Mojang have very recently celebrated the game’s first decade in existence, I believe this is a fitting time to review the game’s history, and take a look at what it has become today.

Minecraft was created by Markus ‘‘Notch’’ Persson in 2009. It was a very simple game at the time, merely a concept. You could move around and place blocks, but that was basically it. The game was released as a test version to the public, and people found it fun. Notch kept building onto the game, adding more blocks, even mobs and eventually the survival gamemode. In 2010, he founded Mojang. The game was only officially released in 2011, and yet two years of beta testing had already won Minecraft many players who bought it immediately. Eventually, in 2014, Notch sold his creation (and his company) to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, who took over development of the game.

Minecraft is a sandbox game where you can do literally anything you want. If you want to build something, you have a varied pallet of blocks to use, allowing to indeed build anything that may come to mind. There is also a survival mode, where you have limited resources and where you have to worry about mobs and hunger and death in general. I personally think this game is so great because of all the option you have: you can build, you can explore or you can blow stuff up. There are even tons of really awesome servers that you can join, where you can play really fun mini games made by very creative people. If you want, you can invite a friend into your world. All of this, in my opinion, makes for a very awesome gaming experience.

This game also has a very active modding community, meaning that if you own Minecraft you can play any game in the world in it, through mods. Fortnite? Yeah, Minecraft had that on every multiplayer server before it even existed. Call of Duty? You can get guns. Want to become Thanos, or the Flash? There are mods to get the Infinity Gauntlet, become a speedster, a web-head, a Pokémon trainer… the list goes on for as long as you have the patience to list stuff out. Minecraft is basically all games crammed into one, making it in my opinion super worth it. However, even if you’re playing pure, unmodded Minecraft, it still allows you to become an explorer, a trader, a miner, a builder, a dragon-slayer (Skyrim eat your heart out (JK I love Skyrim)) and whatever else.

I can’t think of any game with so much variety. The game is also constantly updated with new stuff that makes you wonder how they come up with all these awesome ideas (even though they still haven’t made a cave update). They have recently updated the ocean, making it more colorful and full of life. Markus Personally (I’m hilariousJ), I find that update awesome because of how dull and boring the water was before. They have also updates villages and have added pillager raids, where you have to defend villages from the big bad guys. It makes the game feel more like an RPG while staying a never-changing sandbox, something that I can only welcome.

Of course, I could keep on raving about this game, but at the end of the day it doesn’t need my ravings to prove how awesome it is. The amount of people playing this game, the constant attention of the developers to the tiniest of details (except for caves apparently) and the creation of exciting spin-offs (look out for Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons) are only a few of this game’s many qualities which, in my opinion, put it above all others.