The Block Game I Want (The One I Deserve?)

15 Jul, 2026

When I was a kid, sandboxy block games were all the rage. But, you basically had to choose between Minecraft and Shitty Knockoffs of Minecraft.¹ A few of them were fairly high quality and creative. But, generally, "Minecraft clone" meant "derivative slop." So far as I can tell, this is no longer the case. If you want to play "Minecraft but it's good at being a survival game," you can play Vintage Story. If you want to play "Minecraft but it's good at being an RPG," you can play Hytale. If you prefer "Minecraft but it's a space exploration game made of hexagons," that is being diligently created by Some Guy on the Internet.

But, personally, I have always wanted "Minecraft but it's a small - scale colony sim." Minecraft sorta tries to do this. You have NPCs and you can build houses for them, but there's no real reason to. You can trade with them. But, if you're a casual player, there's little reason to. If you're serious about it, you inevitably build a Horrifying Villager Factory Farm, which is not what I'm aiming for. I want something much closer to simplified 3D Rimworld. I want to have to manage a limited number of NPCs, and I want to have to keep them happy and healthy. They shouldn't be able to build for me -- I want to do most of the building. But, they should be able to farm crops and cut down trees and strip mine. I should definitely be able to arm them and have them fight for me. And there should be real threats that try to destroy us (losing is fun, after all). There should be raids and natural disasters, maybe the occasional plague or something. I want some reason to build creatively, the game should force me to build clever farms and traps and such.

Also: the art style should make no apologies about being blocky pixel art. Minecraft made apologies about being blocky pixel art. As a result, the West has fallen. Your block game shouldn't have ugly blocky pixel art, but it really ought to have blocky pixel art. Make it weird and surreal, throw in some neon grass if you're kinky. The worlds should also be decidedly finite. All of the sandboxy block games seem to have infinite worlds, and this makes exploration boring. You can just walk endlessly, you never have to explore a continuous single patch of land. Maybe you can reach other worlds via portal, maybe there's an overworld map you can move around, like there is in Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress. Either way, the actual maps you build on and live in should be totally finite.

Maybe I'll make this game someday, it might be a neat twelve year hobby project. Or, perhaps someone else will first (if you do, I want royalties).