My Experience:
Minecraft was the number one game in the world in 2019, according to Google. People wonder how it became so popular and think it doesn’t deserve that title, but it became popular because people loved playing, and others were dreaming of buying the game after this news. Minecraft ended up selling 350 million copies in 2025. Minecraft was receiving updates that changed the game, and ideas from the Minecraft community kept flowing in.
A Minecraft Movie:
A little while later, Warner bros, Mojang Studios, and Legendary Pictures all helped make a movie about it, called “A Minecraft Movie.” A Minecraft Movie had its official premiere at Leicester Square in London, England. People rushed over to buy tickets to fly there just to go to the premiere.
People posted about it, and people flooded sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. After the Minecraft movie released and the people were burnt out, they got back to playing and trying to beat the game the fastest, including my friends. My family, friends, and I all enjoy playing Minecraft and trying to beat the game. It seemed like everyone tried to beat the game, but sometimes I just want to build.
Building:
Building is my favorite thing to do, and you’re able to be creative and experiment with different materials. I have many worlds that are just filled with building ideas and how to build them. You can also go in a mode called creative and have everything right in front of you, which is perfect for building. The creators built the game in mind of having a sandbox game where people can explore and create! The game went through 2 years of dedication and updates to make a game where you can explore, create, and express yourself in many different ways. While making the game, the Minecraft creator (Notch) said this, “I think the only way I could make something fun and big was if I didn’t expect it to be.”
How to play:
Minecraft is a survival game made out of blocks. In the game, you have an inventory and many inventory slots. Once you join in, you will notice you have a health bar and a hunger bar. The health bar will go down if you get hurt or damaged. Some ways you can get damaged are falling, drowning, not eating enough, or almost any way you can get hurt in real life. You can help get your health bar back up by eating food till your health bar is all the way up.
Starting Out:
To start playing, you have to cut down wood. You can cut down wood with your fist or anything you have in your inventory. Once you do that, you must make a crafting table. The crafting table unlocks a system where you can make anything with the right materials. You also have to watch out for monsters at night, like zombies, skeletons, and a special monster named the Creeper that explodes when near it for too long.
How to Beat the Game:
To beat the game, you have to get the materials to build something called a nether portal. The Nether portal is another dimension in the game where you can find a Nether fortress. The Nether is a place with a lot of lava and hostile monsters. These will try to kill you, so you must maneuver through them. One way to make it easier to maneuver through them is to wear gold. The monsters love gold and respect you if you wear it. The nether fortress will have a place where you fight monsters that will drop blaze rods and enderpearls. You will then be able to make an ender eye that will lead you to a portal called the end portal. You go inside and have to kill a dragon. To do this, you must climb pillars that are around the map, where a crystal is called the end crystal. You can shoot it or hit it, but it will explode on contact, so you must be careful. Then, the dragon will be easier to kill.
Tools:
Some things that make Minecraft so much easier are the tools you can make. Some tools you can make are swords for killing, axes for chopping wood, pickaxes for mining stone, and other ores. Shovels for mining dirt, and hoes for tilling the ground. Each of these is very important, and here’s why. The sword is used for killing monsters in the game and animals quicker. Axes are used for chopping down wood quickly. Chopping trees down with your fist takes super long, and this can cut the time in half. Using pickaxes is the most important item because you can get stone and other ores. If you mine stone with your hand, you won’t get the block. If you mine it with a pickaxe, you can. You must upgrade your tools with ores, too. Once you upgrade with ores (stone, iron, gold, diamond), it will not only mine other ores, but it will also make it quicker to mine. If you get any of the ores, you can upgrade any tool you have in your inventory, like an axe. A shovel is important if you want to make the ground flat or dig quickly. The hoe is important as well because you can plant seeds and have a sustainable food source. 
Building:
I love building, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it throughout the time I have been playing the game. Some things I love building are houses, gardens, and unique designs across all of my buildings. Some things that bring my buildings to life are the flooring and grass. Having texture in your home’s floors makes it feel more unique and homey. In a garden or outside your house, the grass matters. Instead of having normal grass that’s all one color, you can add some moss, leaves, and other green blocks like green dyed wool. The walls of your house can also feel boring sometimes, which is why it’s good to add depth and texture to your walls. I like to add pillars or different blocks that have the same color but a different texture or design. You can add flowers, chimneys, or window shades for easy ways to make your building come to life. A way I like to texture stone is to get different blocks like cobblestone, stone brick, andesite, and smooth stone. Some things to do with the stone are roofs, walls, floors, pathways, or you can make different, unique designs, like a well or a fountain. Some things that aren’t houses that I love building are windmills, lookout towers, unique fences, barns, and greenhouses because I love plants.
Ending:
To wrap it up, Minecraft is a nostalgic and amazing game that made me and others more creative and inspired to play and build in the game. The way I found out about these building ideas is by being creative and searching online, where people are innovative and spark others’ imagination. Minecraft has impacted the gaming community and anyone who loves creating and being creative, trying to build and create anything they can dream of. Minecraft hitting number one and having a movie about it really makes it an amazing and heartwarming game, considering how far it’s come since its initial release. Minecraft is nostalgic to many people, like me, which makes them like it even more. One Reddit user said, “I wish I could go back onto my PlayStation three and just like… play my old world… and to take in a wave of memories and nostalgia that would be part of that world forever.”