Oh, hi, it’s been a while! Both away from Minecraft, and away from writing on this blog, neither of which were necessarily intentional. Last year was a whole thing, and while I stuck to my year of experiences, for the most part, I didn’t write or publish anything about any games, which felt weird. Maybe this year will be different?
Watching others play
Recently I returned to Minecraft, first by watching YouTube videos for quite a few weeks. I was in a bit of a mental and physical slump because of the periodic nature of my chronic conditions, and watching Minecraft while laying down and trying to recouperate was perfect. I found some lovely YouTube channels after only having watched Etho for a while I discovered GeminiTay and PearlescentMoon. I started by watching Gem’s solo videos, but she happened to be on Hermitcraft as well, so eventually I slid into those episodes when I ran out of other recent things to watch.
I had thus far mostly avoided watching Hermitcraft, because I probably had some misconceptions about SMPs in general (heck I even had to look up what SMP meant). I think my own social anxieties about playing such a creative game (because I knew it was creative) came in the way of giving it a chance, and probably that I wasn’t actually interested in Minecraft at all up until a few years ago. After playing Minecraft last however, I had not been watching many videos, but it would seem that a hyperfocus turned on in my head this time.
What I really appreciated was the chill nature of her builds, and the way she engaged with her world and talked to her audience. It was just what I need at that time. The videos were short, but not speed cut. If that makes any sense.
As I began watching her Hermitcraft videos as well, and seeing some of the shananigans they get up to, and finding PearlescentMoon having the same silly humour as myself, I knew I had to watch her channel as well, so I did. And from there it kind of escalated, and then with the Christmas break, and early january break, I had to venture out further and further from these two to find content I wanted to watch. Eventually there was only one option left, playing myself.
Playing Minecraft again
I knew I wanted to play again, and Loa had some time off work, so we decided to venture out on… well an adventure! As usual we couldn’t quite agree on how to play Minecraft, since there’s so many ways, so we started off with a Hardcore world, with no real intent of finishing anything but rather just see how long we can go before we die, and use that time to decide how to continue playing after that.
Eventually we died, but we definitely survived a lot longer than I thought we would, and built some cool farms WITHOUT redstone (which felt like an achievement on its own), and had a lot of fun. Our death was epic, and I feel like that needs a whole dedicated post on its own! (this is going to spawn a lot of new posts)
So then what? Well, we decided that since I’ve never really gone through the end of the game that we’d play, at our normal pace, to get there and get some feeling of accomplishment. We also decided to keep it entirely vanilla, since last time I played with mods. We’ve not quite reached that point yet, but we have gone to the Nether, and I guess that needs to be another adventure post comparing it to the last time I visited the nether, soon™!
Opening up to different aspects
I think one of the charms with Minecraft is how many different ways people can enjoy it. You can do it solo or with people, you can organize everything in such a way that it’s automated, or pick every single flower by hand. You can build the most magnificent fantastical buildings, keep it simple or rebuild the entire world. You can just go adventuring, you can play hardcore so a death is a death, or let yourself not die. You can adjust the difficulty settings as what works best for you.
I know things like this apply to many games, but I’m still really enjoying myself right now by being inspired by many different playstyles at once, and I guess that’s one of the charms of watching Hermitcraft as well, there’s so many different people and types of players to get inspired by.
I think that’s all I wanted to say today, that I’m really enjoying being back in Minecraft again.