As time went on, Lucas held a few meetings with Hector and others.
He explained Minecraft's gameplay and main ideas in more detail.
The plan was to release a mobile version and later a VR version.
But for now, the PC version was the main focus.
After setting all aspects of Minecraft, the whole development team inevitably entered overtime mode.
Time was very tight, after all.
But compared to Minecraft, what was finished first, in just half a month, were two DLCs for Don't Starve.
Reign of Giants and Shipwrecked brought in new creatures and new ways to play.
The content of these two versions wasn't actually that much.
With the existing game framework and Lucas's detailed design drafts, it didn't take too much work.
The new maps, monsters, and extra content reignited players' excitement for Don't Starve.
In the game industry, aside from the Don't Starve players who were happy with the DLC,
some companies and teams started announcing new sandbox games they were working on.
Studios under SkyNova and NetDragon also joined in.
They didn't reveal much, but from the released info, the themes seemed pretty varied.
Lucas took some time to check them out. Many of the developers' ideas just left him speechless.
For example, some basically copied Don't Starve's model. They also used survival as the theme, but only changed the art style and perspective—switching from top-down to third-person over-the-shoulder or first-person view—while promoting it as a sandbox game.
Lucas found it hard not to roll his eyes. Not that the games looked terrible, but from what was shown, they were more like plain survival games with just a tiny bit of open-world elements, yet they labeled themselves sandbox games just because sandbox was popular at the time.
There were quite a few games like this. Some didn't copy Don't Starve directly but tried small changes.
For example, setting the game at sea, where players play as pirates building their own ships, sailing to find legendary creatures, fighting other pirates, and searching for treasure islands.
Some set the background in an apocalypse, still survival-based but with zombies and mutants as the enemies.
Some turned it into an RPG, where players act as demigods, hunting legendary monsters, with the ultimate goal of killing the Olympian gods.
It's clear that Don't Starve's take on sandbox gameplay gave many game designers in the industry a lot of ideas and inspiration.
It's just that, in Lucas's view, many of these games have nothing to do with sandbox at all, yet they're all being marketed as sandbox.
It feels a lot like when Rockstar made GTA the gold standard for open-world, and suddenly tons of games—whether action-adventure, FPS, or RPG—started calling themselves open-world just to ride the trend.
On major gaming forums, players were buzzing with discussions.
"What the hell! I'm sick of this. How many times has this happened already this month? Another sandbox game?"
"My god, Don't Starve started this trend, and now how many studios are making these?"
"To be fair though, as someone who cares a lot about graphics, these look a bit easier to accept than Don't Starve."
"The graphics are nice, but who knows about the gameplay."
On the forums, players kept complaining.
Still, aside from a few sandbox projects that already looked weak from their proposals,
many announced projects did grab players' attention and built up quite a bit of hype.
Clearly, sandbox as a new genre felt fresh to a lot of players.
Even while saying "there are too many, I can't handle it anymore," players' actions showed otherwise—they were still welcoming the new games.
But one thing is for sure: with so many sandbox projects, some of them are bound to crash and burn.
......…
Lucas noticed the sandbox craze being talked about in the industry but didn't pay much attention.
His main task now was to finish Minecraft.
The full version of Minecraft clearly wasn't progressing very fast.
But a demo for PC, made for testing, was already done.
This demo still lacked many features.
Not just tech progression—the crafting system wasn't even included yet.
Simply put, this version was a heavily stripped-down creative mode.
The whole game was very rough. There were no art assets yet, no UI, nothing—just a messy placeholder build.
It even had bits that reminded people of Don't Starve and Dark Souls, which felt totally out of place.
But Lucas didn't care much; these would be replaced later anyway.
After all, most early demos of games looked like this.
Lucas entered the game to test it.
Right now, Steve wasn't even Steve yet—just a block.
Yeah, just a plain white block, no pixel face at all, which looked really weird.
Controlling the character, Lucas flew into the sky and looked around.
Rivers, mountains, forests, grasslands—the basic terrain generation was random.
Of course, "random" still followed a self-consistent logic.
It couldn't be truly random; it used formulas to calculate resources.
If it were truly random, you might end up with a world with no water, or just endless ocean and no land.
The chances were tiny, but still possible.
He quit and re-entered.
After trying several times and looking carefully, Lucas nodded slightly.
For now, he hadn't found any big problems.
Of course, more sample testing would still be needed later.
As for the art assets,
players in this parallel world had much stronger average setups than in his previous life.
So hardware wasn't an issue, and the quality could be pushed higher.
After all, good visuals were part of the game experience.
No player would ever say, "Forget 4K, I'd rather stick with beautiful 360p full of jagged edges," as long as the gameplay stayed intact.
"For the visuals, make the blocks feel more textured, and improve the textures for different materials."
"And for special materials like lava and seawater, make sure their style matches the normal blocks. Lighting will be key too—fire, sunlight, and so on should affect materials more realistically, like glass or water."
Lucas said to Rachel.
Rachel didn't reply, just nodded and noted the key points.
"Alright, you guys can go. Hector, stay for a bit—I'll explain the crafting and tech systems in detail. Then make a demo prototype for that," Lucas turned to Hector and said.
(End of The Chapter)
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