I am an addict. Phew! There, I said it. I, like many other closet geeks, am addicted to Minecraft. Damn you notch!! I first heard about Minecraft on good game where bajo told me of the joys of punching sheep, I was a little confused as to what this new game, that looked like an old game, was actually all about. Husband heard about it too,PSP 2000, and next thing you know, we purchased it for something like 9 gbp or whatever.

Didn't exactly break the bank so what the hey!

Minecraft is the hardest game to explain, because it doesn't really have a point. You just do what you want to do with it.

Some people play it as a hunting game, waiting for the night to fall an the monsters to come out.

Others build massive structures, quite impressive really, one guy built the starship enterprise for crying out loud!

And me? Well, I dug a hole.

At first I was all like "yay, breaking bricks and building homes, digging for iron, woot!" Then I was like "cool, I found a massive cavern while digging a tunnel and it had zombies in it that killed me!" But also I was like "'now that i've re-spawned and killed all the zombies and shit and put up some torches and stuff, there's heaps of cool shizzit in here!" And then I was all "i'm so lost in this labyrinth of caverns! I wish it was one big cavern!"

So that was how I began the great hole dig of 2011!

I downloaded (by i, I mean husband, he's clever like that) a map program so I can actually see what i'm digging into, and I began to look down through the layers of my world.

I discovered that all my caverns, were actually connected, and that in all the walls and floors separating the 'rooms', was a whole heap of cool shit!

So using the map, I marked out the corners of what would be the great hole, making sure to not miss any ore deposits below the surface.

I then connected the corners with a walkway.

Filled in all the water, then dug out the dirt.

Encased the water spawn point in an orb of dirt.

Then began to systematically dig my way down.

And down.

And down!

The floor of the great hole covers 48 x 98 cubes.

That's 4,704 cubes. Assuming a layer consists of entirely gravel bricks, and that a pick-axe destroys approx 130 gravel bricks before breaking, that's approx 36 pick-axes per layer. I'm about 23 layers below sea level. To get there I would have needed to break approx 108,192 bricks. That's 832 pick-axes. I have spent a significant number of hours digging this hole.

And I'm only about half way......

But Minecraft isn't just about digging and building (or mining and crafting if you will), there's other thing in this game.

Such as soft and fluffy animals!

Punching a sheep gives you wool, now available in both the black and white varieties.

Killing a pig gives you a pork chop for health, you can then cook the pork chop for extra crispy health goodness.

Killing a chicken gives you feathers for arrows.

Killing cows gives you leather for armour, it's week, but everyone looks good in a leather suit.

You can also craft a saddle, allowing you to ride the pig..... I haven't done that yet.

But when the sun sets over the horizon, look out......

Because you are not alone......

Monsters will spawn in any dark place, which is why my great hole is covered in pretty torches. Skeletons shoot arrows, which makes them difficult to kill unless you've crafted yourself a bow and some arrows. Every time you try to get close enough to hit them with your sword, they just shoot you! But you can hear their bones ratting when they're close, giving you ample time to run away. Spiders are fairly easy to kill, and necessary for acquiring string to craft your bow. Plus they make a squelchy squeeling sound so you can hear them coming. Zombies moan of course, so they're easy enough to hear coming. Not hard to kill, just a few jabs with your sword and they're dead. Also, along with skeletons, zombies catch on fire when the sun comes up!

And then there's the creeper.

The creepers only aim in life, is to fuck your shit up.

You cannot hear the creeper coming.

He makes no footsteps.

You'll be working away at mining some iron, when you hear a sssssssss......Kaboom!

The sssssssss tells you you have approx 2 seconds before that damn creeper blows up, destroying all your hard work, and often killing you too.

The creeper is the most feared monster in Minecraft. The worst part is, when you die, you drop all your belongings. You then re-spawn, at your original spawn point from when you first played the game. All your belongings will be waiting for you for a limited amount of time, but they wait where you died. If you die at night, which is when most Minecraft deaths occur as a result of monster attacks, then you will re-spawn far away, with no belongings, no armour, no weapons, and have to find your way back without dying again! I don't know what it is about Minecraft, but I love it. I'm completely addicted and don't think that'll change anytime soon. It's one of those things where you try to explain it to people and they just look at you like you're eating your own earwax or something. You'll just have to try it out for yourselves.

Beware the creeper.