Sandbox Games

In a sandbox game the player has the ability to create, modify, or destroy their environment. The term alludes to a child's sandbox where the child can create and destroy with no given objective.

Minecraft is a sandbox game that revolves around using building blocks to create anything you want. It is a commercial game distributed by Mojang Synergies AB which is now owned by Microsoft. The game is playable on Windows PC & Mobile, Apple iPhone iPad & Mac, Android phones & pads, Kindle Fire, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Linux.

Minetest looks very similar to Minecraft, but has been developed with some different design goals. Minetest is a very basic game “out of the box”, but is intended to provide a framework for programmers and game designers to realise their ideas, with the same freedom that players can build their world using the blocks in the virtual world. Mods are created which add new blocks to the game, change the way the game behaves and add extra things the players can do. The game is totally free to download and play. It can be played on a number of different devices: Windows PC, Apple Mac, Linux PC, and Android phones & pads, but not Apple iPhone and iPad yet due to licensing restrictions.

NetCraft is a possible alternative on all devices as it is browser based. This means the game does not need to be installed on each device, it is downloaded like a web page when you visit it. As the viewer is written in JavaScript, it will be slower than Minetest or Minecraft, but it should still be fast enough for what I have in mind. It is not designed to be extendable, like Minetest is, but the source code is small and looks easy to modify directly.

WorldCraft and PlanetCraft also looks interesting. They can be played on Android, Apple and Windows devices.

Planet Of Cubes also looks interesting. They can be played on Android, Apple and Kindle devices.