I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I have never played Minecraft - “Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine.” I remember first hearing about it when it started to really pick up momentum about a year and a half ago. I watched videos of all of the amazing things that people would make in it but I never caved in. Due to Minecraft’s popularity, several Minecraft knock-offs have been done to only mimic the core basics, not add anything substantial to the formula, and then profit like mad. The first true exception I saw was Terraria, which actually builds onto the core mechanics of Minecraft and its inspirations. Terraria adds NPCs, much more in-depth fighting (bosses included!), and some more RPG elements.

Back in November Aaron, my brother and Siege Games designer, picked up Terraria and before too long I was sucked into it as well. We played an alarming number of hours before we even started to slow down. To revitalize the game some, Aaron began looking into the mods for the game and even tried making his own. I watched and cringed as he fumbled around trying to decompile the executable just in order to add a mod to the game. After much hackery he was able to get the game recompiled but broken. It wasn’t much longer when we decided that the game had ran its course.

Fast forward a few months, I had been struggling to get the movement down for Crazy Old Me for a few weeks. I knew its importance but it was really starting to take its toll on both the project and me. So much so that I began an innocent brainstorming of “If I were to make a game like Terraria, what would I do differently?” The answer was clear – “Easily moddable”. My excitement grew exponentially as I began to realize the implications that this could have. Many people describe Minecraft as a virtual Lego set. My envisioning is to not only let players play with the Legos but make it easy for them to build the Lego blocks as well. I’m sure Aaron and I could still be playing Terraria if we had at least some freedom in modding it. Of course, the core game has to be enjoyable enough to warrant mods and so Aaron and I had a more official brainstorming session. We came up with some more answers to my original question that could help set us apart.

We were thoroughly seduced by this sandbox idea. So much so that we knew we had to at the very least play around with the idea. Crazy Old Me had not been forgotten but and it did slow us down some but “we can come back to it in 2 weeks” was enough to convince us. So for the last two weeks we have been working adamantly on fleshing out this concept and working on an early alpha. The likelihood of us returning to Crazy Old Me dwindles everyday as we march forth to the holy procedurally generated land. Here are some (random) main points planned for the game. I will go into them in greater detail soon.

• 2D platformer with building (somewhat given)
• Easily moddable but with extreme flexibility
• Unique crafting system
• Core RPG elements (such as leveling)
• Colorful and stylized art from Kelley McMorris
• Multiplayer