Minecraft? More like Cubey Dark Souls of Doom!

Minecraft is like that one pet, you know the one, sweet, adorable, and quietly plotting your demise the second you turn your back. Perhaps that'd be called a cat? Minecraft has amassed a massive following of all ages, but it is so, so far from being innocent. It's like calling a scorpion cuddly. I kid you not, one day, at some point, Minecraft will take everything that you hold dear and destroy you. It can be quite the traumatizing experience. For those who don't understand at all what I am hinting at, Minecraft is kind of like a cubey Dark Souls... of doom.

Gaping Dragon found via darksouls.wikidot.com
Aren't they so similar?

While art, atmosphere, game play, and... well... just the general direction of both Minecraft and Dark Souls are completely different, there is one key thing that they both share, the agony of your demise. It is a heart wrenching and brutal experience to be ended in either of these games. However, there is one which is far harsher than the other. In one you keep all of your things except for a currency of sorts, which can be reclaimed if you don't die again; in the other, you lose everything on you and have only 5 minutes to get back to it or else it all goes poof.

If you are not familiar with Dark Souls or Minecraft, would you care to guess which one is which?

In Soviet Minecraft, game plays you! That's right. If you die in Minecraft, you lose everything. There is no reclaiming your things if you can not get back to your stuff in five minutes. Sometimes this isn't a big deal. If you die near your house, you can just grab it. But if you die exploring endless caverns, wandering around the overworld for a better place to build, or Notch forbid excuse my language :< in the Nether or even fighting the Ender Dragon, you need to get back to it fast. That is if you didn't fall into lava where everything burned to a crisp or even fell off of an End Island due to some horrible twist of fate. Sometimes you have hard-earned gear on you, especially when fighting something like the Ender Dragon. In some cases, like when you're exploring and unfortunately aren't paying attention, you must accept defeat and wallow in your own sorrow and ignorance. Wallow like the peasant you know you are.

Muy shiny, but do not touch.

All is not total doom, however. There are mods which can help soften this blow, or even take away its threat completely. Furthermore, Minecraft works by having areas called "chunks" loaded while you play. This is basically just a unit of measure for a certain area, and if the chunk your stuff was in isn't loaded, the five minutes hasn't started quite yet. So there is hope. In unmodded Minecraft, almost everything can be regained should it all be lost. You can collect more stuff, enchant more gear, build yourself up all over again. For some people this is easy. Some people even have spare equipment for said occasion, but for others this can be a very unfortunate experience, especially for newcomers to the game or those who play more casually. Unlike the neeeerds.

Stare into the face of porky terror.

I've had a couple of experiences though where the brutality of death in Minecraft rubbed me quite the wrong way. There was an experience from when I first started Minecraft where a skeleton shot me into lava and I lost almost an entire stack of iron ore and a couple stacks of coal. I was so upset thinking I had lost invaluable materials that I quit and deleted that particular map, cursing the name of Notch and Mojang! Silly, naive, little me. If only I knew back then what it truly meant to lose in Minecraft. I'm sure many players of Minecraft have similar stories from their early days. Since then I've lost good picks, amazing swords, but I've also lost difficult to attain gear on certain servers as well. The most recent of which happened not too long ago. I had been flying around with an Elytra and I had an item that helped me stay in the air and zoom around which was specific to this server. This item cost a special currency that can sometimes take a bit of time and effort to gain. I ended up dying due to my own impatience and stupidity and did not remember where I had died. I had also ventured so far away and in random directions on impulse, making retracing my steps even more difficult. Everything was gone. My items sat there, sad and lonely, awaiting my return only to vanish into endedness because I just could not find them, even after an hour of trying. Yeah, I had traveled faaaaar away. It was a terrible feeling, and I had to swallow the loss and move on, like every Minecraft player before me. Also like disgusting grape-flavored cough syrup to the eye.

Much like Dark Souls, hasty actions, not being cautious, and not being aware of your environment can be the doom of you in Minecraft. I'm sure many a player has experienced the stomach dropping "Tssssss" of a creeper suddenly behind you and armed to explode. However, much like in Dark Souls, it is this element of danger and loss that makes Minecraft more of a fruitful experience. I believe it adds to the game, giving it a certain edge, and allowing us to savor our safety and our near-misses of devastation just that much more. Although, I should inform you that I do play on a server without mob griefing, which thankfully means creepers can't blow up all of my precious blocks. However, I still experience the horror of the "Tsssss."

Tssssss.

SURPRISE