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Our First Minecraft Adventure



My son doesn't watch TV a great deal but he loves to watch videos on YouTube and for quite some time he has been watching grownups reviewing toys and especially Lego-sets. But suddenly one day he started to watch videos made by a man with the name Joseph Garrett aka known as Stampy Cat. This young man plays Minecraft a lot. So now I hear Stampy Cat in my house every day. He has a rather sweet voice and his videos are funny and sometimes very exciting.

Many hours have been spent watching Stampy Cat create things, loosing dogs, getting help from Lee Bear and competing with Squid. Then I thought; why are we watching someone else playing? Perhaps we can try to play ourselves.

I downloaded the Minecraft app to our IPad and we started. I have not played much at all since I overdosed on Doom many, many moons ago. I stopped because I couldn't sleep. Hard to fall peacefully to sleep when you hear monsters breathing down your neck. But this game is so innocent in comparison.  You just build your own little world, put up your bed, make some cows and pigs and fend off a few creepers or zombies.

When I step out of the shower the next morning I hear my son screaming, “Mommy, mommy you have to help me get out of here.” He had walked into a cave, kept digging and now he was stuck. I put the IPad on my lap and looked at the uniform brown surrounding. “Do you know where you came from?” I ask and my son shakes his head. “Dig us out!” he says like that is the most obvious thing in the world. Ok, I grab the pickax and start digging in frenzy. After about a minute I stop. “This is not working,” I say, “I have no idea if we are going deeper into the hill or getting closer to the surface.”

I start to look around, above us, or at least I think it is above us, I see different blocks. It is glass! “Did you put those there?” My son nods. A plan takes form in my head. I will climb up to those blocks and then I will keep climbing and look for more different blocks. Excellent! I rub my hands and start climbing. I see the glass blocks closer and closer but for some reason I can’t get to them. “I can’t reach them!” I say frustrated. “Not like that! Let me do it!” He pulls the IPad out of my hands. 

I see him climb around and I leave to get dressed. Then I hear; “Mommy I am stuck in a hole! I can’t get out!”Now he is well below the glass blocks again. “You have to get me out.” He looks at me with his frustrated blue eyes. “Yes! I will get you out!” I put the IPad on my lap again. “Maybe if we make a pig, it can show us the way out.” Excitement and doubt shows up in my son’s face. I spawn a pig. A pink, square pig who walks up to us and looks at us with trusting eyes. “Get us out, pig! Please get us out!” I plead.  The pig turns around and starts walking. Both my son and I squeal with happiness. “Follow it! Follow it!” I climb as fast as I can out of the hole and try to follow the pig but it is gone. I hear it oinking somewhere.

“Maybe a dog is better.” My intelligent child says.  A dog! Well of course! I spawn a wolf that is the thing that looks most like a dog. We ask the dog to get us out. It looks at us as if we are crazy and then turn around and walks away from us. We try to follow the dog as it moves with  a much faster pace than us.

The pig shows up again, still pink and still with big trusting eyes. “The pig! The pig!” We scream. “Wait for us!” We walk into a tunnel and everything turns dark. By now I am so frustrated and excited at the same time sweat is pouring down my back and I scream, “We need torches!” My son jumps up and down. I make some torches and the pig is gone. We walk further into the dark tunnel and we fall into a new hole.

And there we sat in a hole in a dark cave. We heard the pig snorting and the dog barking in the distance. “Sorry,” I said. “I can’t get us out of here.” My son sighed. “Mommy, let’s just start over with a new world.”

That is the beauty with Minecraft. Even if you are in a hole in a dark cave and your pig and your dog have deserted you; you can start over.

PS. One day when I have the time I will get us out of there. 
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