Let’s face it: we’re all waiting for Markus “Notch” Persson to bring an official version of “Minecraft” to the iOS platform. The second it goes on the App Store at a reasonable price, we’re downloading it and enjoying the heck out of the block-building, mineral harvesting, fortress building, enemy defending and slaying goodness that comes with it.
We also plan on playing until sleep and adequate social skills are but distant memories...but shh, don't tell anyone.
Still, there’s the downtime between now and the final release and not much that can be done about it, no matter how much you insist that you want the official version of Minecraft to arrive on the App Store. In the meantime, Ari Ronen’s “Eden – World Builder” will just have to be the methadone fix for the Minecraft heroin you’re craving.
Available for 99 cents on the App Store (and requiring only iOS 3.2 or later to run), Eden functions as something of a trainer for Minecraft. Incorporating the sandbox idea of a near-infinite world made of blocks, Eden allows you to build, create, mine, destroy and burn from a never-ending supply of textured blocks.
While this may lack the constraints and challenges of Minecraft that keep you harvesting blocks, minerals and items to fight wandering skeletons, it does get you used to the core idea of the game, which is that this is the world you have to become used to, which tools are available to you, how far your character can jump and at which range you can manipulate objects in front of your character.
True, it'd be a better training experience to have limited resources as well as wandering skeletons and a limited life force (as seen in some of the game modes of the standard Minecraft), but you have to walk before you can sprint...
One of the most interesting features to be found in "Eden" is a world-sharing mode in which you can readily upload levels you've created/modified as well as download similar worlds that others have toyed with. This may not teach you how to deal with the roving skeletal armies to be found in the full version of Minecraft, but it can work to show you ideas that others have come up with and feed your imagination for when the real thing arrives.
And that's never a bad thing.
Let's get down to brass tacks: while Eden is useful, it's not Minecraft. It's training wheels for Minecraft. And fairly basic training wheels at that, the act of comparing Eden to Minecraft being that of comparing a CD filled with naught but whale songs to a live Black Sabbath performance from the 70s, complete with backup dancers, free nacho platters for all, pyrotechnics and additional pyrotechnics for effect. Even so, Eden provides a bottomless box of textured Lego-esque pieces with which to build almost anything at any height, width or length. Almost anything you want to create is just a few well-placed mouse clicks away and if you can pull yourself into this mindset, then almost nothing is impossible once Minecraft hits the App Store…
In as much as there's a certain joy in building a structure and carving it to perfection, there's that tiny, imp-like part of you that wants to knock it down again, if only to see what happens. Eden does this well, the game boasting a TNT block option as well as an option to light almost any surface on fire. The end result is, well, incredibly destructive, but something that teaches you how to adapt to this destruction as well as look around and process how to rebuild given your revised setting.
Just found yourself at the low point of a nigh-bottomless hole? Now's the time to learn how to dig yourself out, figure out how to make a crude stairway using only your imagination and get back on your feet even if you're now in a place you never expected you'd be…
Yes, we all want Minecraft to arrive and know we'd surrender a significant portion of our abilities to remember mealtimes, when to feed assorted pets and social prowess once it hits. We accept that. But until it does, these are the training wheels, available for just under a dollar that look great on an iPhone or iPad, feature responsive controls and will teach you the mindset for the real thing once it arrives with your very own pony…
