Minecraft Beta, formerly known as Indev, Infdev and Alpha. During the Alpha, Minecraft was sold for the price of ten Euros, now the game will cost fifteen Euros. The beta version has a survival game mode with single-and multiplayer versions. In Beta it is required that the player uses building and mining as methods of protection against enemy monsters, and as a way to find useful metals. Beta also includes limits on the number of blocks that can be tracked by the player, using an inventory. It is also required to extract all the blocks manually instead of having endless blocks as is the case in Classic mode.

Several blocks can be manufactured in 2x2 mode by crafting in the inventory or on a desk in 3x3 mode. There are also plants and animals in the game. These can be grown and hunted for food or other commodities. The player has an inventory of blocks and items, like a health meter and, depending on whether you wear armor or not, an armor meter. Life Points can be restored by eating food and your armor points can be restored by attracting a new harness. Hit points and armor points can be lost by falling long distances or attacks by monsters. Upon death, the players come alive again on the original starting point with an empty inventory, although items can be reacquired if the player reaches the point of death before the items disappeared.

Beta also places a heavy emphasis on creativity and inventiveness. Players must develop methods for building functional and navigable bases so they can withstand the nightly attacks from different monsters. Beta provides an almost infinite horizontal game world (about four billion to four billion blocks long), although there are significant limits to how high and how deep you can go. The game world is generated as the player explores as much as possible to save memory and shorten loading time. Beta can be played with a desktop client or a browser. The Minecraft single player changed from alpha to beta status on 20 December 2010, the multiplayer followed shortly thereafter.

Since the Beta version 1.3 there is an application in the video settings: "Smooth Lighting. This was already possible with the mod of MrMessiah but is now officially implanted in the game. This enables the lighting to become softer or harder and has a noticeable effect on the speed of the game for people with a slow computer.

Since Beta 1.4 it is possible to bake cookies and to tame wolves. Beta 1.5 update features weather phenomena in the game. Think of lightning, rain and snow.