Minecraft is a sandbox game where the aim is to build things out of cubes from a first-person or third person perspective. The game can only be downloaded on the official website of Minecraft. Minecraft is currently under development but the game is sold and downloaded over two million times. Minecraft was initially developed by Markus "Notch" Persson and is now being further developed by the company he founded, Mojang AB . The final version is expected on November 11, 2011.

Minecraft is a sandbox game, which means you can play the game however you want, without missions or goals or objectives; you are completely free to decide how to play the game. You mainly play by collecting blocks to build tools and shelters. This is called ‘mining’ and can be done by hitting blocks by hand or with tools.

Controls

Move mouse - look around

W - Move Forward
S - Move Backward
A - Move Left
D - Move Right

Left Mouse Button - mining and attacking
Right Mouse Button - block placing, open chests/crafting bench/forge

I - Inventory
Left Shift - sneak, which allows you to safely walk ledges and sneak around mobs
Numbers 1 to 9 - select items
F3 - Display frame rate (FPS) and your current co-ordinates
F - toggle fog level
ESC - auto-save, options menu

Difficulty

There are four levels of difficulty: peaceful, easy, normal, hard. Peaceful has no mobs, the other three do. Peaceful is handy if you just want to build without being disturbed. The other three levels go up in difficulty by spawning more mobs which do more damage and are harder to kill.

If you die (losing all your hearts by falling or being attacked) you will respawn at your starting point. You lose all items in your inventory at the place where you die and you have 5 minutes to recover them. Items in chests are safe and you won’t lose them if you die. So remember to put your valuable items in chests.