The best games like Minecraft will cure that blocky survival addiction of yours. It has been a worldwide phenomenon since it first launched in 2009 as a small indie experiment.It’s no wonder the game became so big: it introduced a formula even titles like Fallout 4 wanted to add into its core formula. It’s the ultimate crafting game, allowing you to gather resources to build tools and structures freely.Let’s take a look at the best alternatives we can find, twelve years after the Mojang Studios hit piece. Our selections span several prices and platforms (mobile, consoles, and PC). We think you’re destined to find your next time-consuming game.
Selecting The Best Games Like Minecraft
We pinpointed the essential elements of the block builder to find the best games like Minecraft. So, you may be craving the Minecraft experience without actually playing Minecraft. That’s good for us: the games we choose are not copy-cats but titles that mix similar ingredients.
Pixel graphics: The defining element of Minecraft is its graphics. The pixelated and squared visuals can be more appealing for kids, as it feels cartoonish and friendly. Free-roam open-world: Similarly, Minecraft is an open-world game without a specific goal. It gives players the greatest freedom video games can offer.Block builder: The next defining creature is the building/crafting mechanic. Minecraft revolves around destroying blocks for resources and then using those resources to build tools, gear, and structures. The limit is your imagination. Biomes: The open-world has different biomes like forests, deserts, oceans, tundras, and more. Nevertheless, the world is essentially infinite. Exploration and combat: Minecraft players can also explore the map to find enemies. They use their gear to fight against zombies, spiders, and other monsters. Survival game mode: Minecraft offers various game modes with different mechanics. In survival, dangerous monsters attack at night, and the player has to build a shelter to survive. Players start with limited hitpoints and tools. Creative game mode: The next popular game mode is creative. It grants players an infinite amount of all block materials and tools to build whatever whenever. Extreme game mode: Like survival, Extreme characters can’t revive after death. Adventure game mode: The adventure is about exploring the world to discover the map. User-created game mods: Not to forget, Minecraft allows users to create their own game modes. These include PvP servers, co-op explorations to alternate dimensions, and more.Teaching advantages: Lastly, Minecraft works as an amazing tool to enhance children’s creativity and teach coding.
All of these elements can work on multiplayer, either online or co-op. It’s hard to follow up on such a beloved game after adding all of these elements. However, the choice ultimately depends on you.
Top 12 Games Like Minecraft
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is a charming indie title where you play as a farmer. It mixes the Minecraft building formula with old-school RPG features. Moreover, it adds sweet Animal Crossing mechanics.Instead of large-scale construction, Stardew Valley is “smaller.” You manage a farm by cultivating seeds, raising animals, crafting machines, and customizing the area. Most of your activities will progress your character in five different skill trees.The game has a plot, though. Your grandfather’s old farm may help the town survive a greedy corporation. You can also befriend neighbors, romance potential partners, and follow a questline if you want to. Alternatively, you can explore a cave full of beasts and resources for your farm. Overall, we choose it because of its building experience. Recently, we made a list featuring the best games like Stardew Valley. You may find what you’re craving there (like Terraria).
Roblox
Roblox came before Minecraft, and it’s the most obvious competition. However, it’s not exactly a “game,” as Roblox is instead a free gaming platform. As a Roblox user, you can play games other users created with the Roblox engine or make one yourself.Let me explain: Roblox is a game engine where players can create several game modes and realities. From medieval games to all-out building simulations, Roblox enhances creativity, especially to children. The sandbox allows you to create anything you’d like, from a massive skyscraper to a roller-coaster PvP experience. Some examples are Fastcraft, Minerblocks, Survival Island, and Build to Survive Simulator.Overall, though, the big focus is about building and dismantling the world to create virtually anything. Moreover, Roblox uses a similar graphical style as Minecraft. It’s pixelated “studs” instead of blocks. That makes it generally appealing for kids as well.
Ark: Survival Evolved
Ark: Survival Evolved is one of the most popular survival sandbox games you can play. As many games have done, it took the Minecraft crafting formula towards modern first-person standards.You play as a man or a woman stranded on an ARK, a mysterious biome full of dinosaurs. Your goal is to survive as much as you can, and you’d need to gather resources on the island to craft food, water, shelters, medicine, gears, and more.Your character also advances in two separate ways. First, you level up to unlock crafting recipes and improve character stats. Secondly, you advance your technological trees to create increasingly better weapons and structures. So, you may start with a wooden spear and a bed made of leaves and progress towards a stone fortress and make-shift bazookas.However, complex crafts require better resources. You need to travel further into the island to get better resources, where more dangerous dinosaurs await. Yet, I haven’t mentioned the best part of the game: you can tame dinosaurs to protect you or ride to battle.
Space Engineers
Space Engineers is an open-world sandbox that focuses on exploration and creativity. It takes the Minecraft core mechanics and uses them in space. It means you’ll be mining resources to craft spaceships, space stations, and gear. You can journey through the solar system for resources and use them to expand your facilities. And like Minecraft, it features similar Survival and Creative game modes to tweak your experience. Nevertheless, it uses a set of complex mechanics to blend its different playtime experiences. In essence, players can build ships, control vehicles, pilot ships, explore planets, gather resources, and craft. Moreover, the game has a volumetric-based physics engine. It means absolutely anything in the game can be disassembled, destroyed, damaged, and assembled back together. Volumetric objects are block-like modules with velocity, mass, inertia, storage, and volume calculations.
Trove
Trove is one of the most similar games to Minecraft. Its resemblance is readily apparent graphical-wise. Notably, the developers used the same technical core as Minecraft: Voxels. Voxels are individually rendered 3D cubes.It has a tweak, though. Trove leans into the action gameplay, and it’s an MMO. It revolves around dungeon crawling and defeating enemies for rewards (like a gear). Players can progress through the caves and mines alone or with friends.Players have a range of “Cubular Classes” to select, and these alter the playstyle in significant ways. Not only that: Trove allows you to build houses and structures block by block, and you use the materials you find on your ventures.Even though it deviates from the formula, Trove is one of the best games like Minecraft you can play. That’s because its playtime works through pixelated graphics, cubular enemies, and infinite realms that look eerily familiar.
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Games like Minecraft take some of the block builder elements to add twists. Dragon Quest Builders 2 does exactly that to deliver an RPG title revolving around survival and craft.The game introduces a charming blocky fantasy land oppressed by an evil cult. The evildoers are looking to eliminate those daring to use their creativity. You, the hero, travel to stop the villains before the world falls to bits.This setting opens up various mechanics. It has RPG-style quests, NPCs, hack & slash combat, quirky dialogue, and a retro soundtrack. These are elements proper of the first game, and there’re new features in the sequel.For novelties and a Minecraft-inspired game, players can gather materials to make buildings and gear. Lastly, the title allows online co-op as well.
Don’t Starve
Don’t Starve is king in mixing survival, horror, and sandbox crafting. The whole game revolves around gathering resources to survive monster hordes. It’s as if the developers were inspired by a zombie invasion during a Minecraft night.You play as Wilson, a Gentleman Scientist trapped in a mysterious wilderness. You must learn to use the environment to your will, so you manage to escape back home.Here, you can gather resources, craft items, build structures, and combat monsters. Along the journey, you’ll unravel the mystery of the land during challenging worldbuilding and exploration. There’re no instructions, no help, and no map markers.Lastly, the game comes with classic-style cartoons, with 2D character models living in a 3D world.
Lego Worlds
The Lego-themed video game takes inspiration from Minecraft and Lego. Needless to say, the two franchises have a lot in common.First, you can destroy and build anything in Lego Worlds. You can even tear down entire environments and swap them for large structures. You also have a suite of crafting tools for all your needs.Then, you have a campaign mode featuring the whimsical and humorous Lego gameplay. Elsewhere, you can explore procedurally created worlds to gather resources and create anything, one brick at a time.Lastly, you can explore vast worlds with motorbikes, dragons, helicopters, trucks, or…gorillas? Either way, your ventures may yield rewards that improve your gameplay.
Rust
Rust is another survival FPS using hefty crafting mechanics. The twist is its unique introduction: you join a world, naked and poor, pushed to figure out everything for yourself.After respawning several times, you’ll start to see how the game works. Rust is about gathering resources to build shelters, gear, and supplies. It’s the only way to survive from other players, as the maps support 8 to 20 players. These players may raid you for your loot or cooperate with you for fun.On top of enemy players, everything in Rust maps wants to see you dead. The wildlife, NPCs, and the environments are all enemies. You’ll need to protect yourself from wolves and a cold and toxic environment. In that regard, Rust adds micro-management elements for a realistic shooter experience.Lastly, Rust has seen over 300 content updates with monthly patches. The developers truly do a great job keeping the game alive and fresh. Because of said support, the amount of things you can buy currently is crazy. That includes pówer grids, helicopters, farms, musical instruments, train networks, and more.
Subnautica
Subnautica is a gorgeous and unique title with a signature mechanic. Although it’s a survival game with loot gathering and crafting, the entire gameplay is underwater.You’re stranded on Planet 4546B, a water biome brimming with hostile life. Then, it’s similar to Minecraft’s survival mode. You gather resources to overcome the dangers by building shelters, tools, and gear.But unlike the block-based entry, Subnautica has a good plot. Players will slowly “unwater” the story of the world as they dive deeper and deeper. There’s a mystery behind your crash, a strange virus infesting sea life and derelict underwater bases.Overall, we choose Subnautica because of its vast, beautiful world. It’s a venture to remember from rich corals to dark underwater caves. If you’re hungry for more, you could check similar survival games for the exploring/crafting gameplay loop.
Eco
Eco is an early access title, and it’s also the most complex and advanced of the games like Minecraft we found.You create a simulated ecosystem. You build structures, collect resources, harvest crops, hunt animals, watch over towns, make clothing, trade, and everything in-between. The goal is to survive a meteor strike that could destroy the entire world. So, you have to build a civilization before time runs out.Like Minecraft, Eco also serves as a teaching tool. It helps convey the essence of how society works to children. Also, the science is realistic: there’s erosion, waste, trash, limited resources, pollution, and more.Overall, it’s a complex and challenging game. Building an entire society capable of surviving a meteor strike is no small task. On top of that, your civilization could crumble from within even before the major catastrophe.
Minecraft Dungeons
Minecraft Dungeons is the 2020 spin-off. Instead of the free-roam sandbox, the newer title is about dungeon-crawling for loot. This might be the best option if you were looking for the Minecraft experience without the grind.In essence, Dungeons is a point-and-click hack & slash action RPG with an isometric perspective. Players explore randomly generated dungeons, as well as hand-crafted dungeons. Adventures await alongside loot, monsters, and treasures.Unlike Torva, there’s no class system. Similarly, character progression relies on finding better loot and artifacts that grant spells. However, players will find traps, bosses, and puzzles.Lastly, the game supports a multiplayer co-op with up to four players in the group.
