Editor’s Note: Before reading this review, we highly recommend checking out our review for Episode One: The Order of the Stone , Episode 2: Assembly Required , and Episode 3: The Last Place You Look as there are spoilers ahead.

Minecraft is the brainchild of Markus “Notch” Persson, an independent game developer from Sweden. Persson’s interest in the building elements of games like Infiniminer led him to expand upon the construction pitch of the game and add in expansive exploratory and dungeon-crawling features as well. In 2009, Persson released an alpha version of Minecraft , with an overwhelmingly avid public flocking to see the game. Persson continued to develop the game into beta, with users being frequently updated with new modes, mods and abilities as it developed. Before the game even went gold in March 2012, Minecraft earned over 4 million purchases. It is currently the sixth bets selling PC game of all time with over 33 million copies sold across all platforms (over 12 million of those being on PC alone).

The lack of plot means the action needs to carry the game, which Minecraft Dungeons nicely pulls off. It’s a fairly stripped-down entry in the genre, with no character classes or specializations, but instead focuses on character customization through loot. At the start you choose a character skin, none of which have any advantage or disadvantage over another, and then through the course of the adventure find gear to fit your play style. There are six slots to fill, three of which are for action accessories assigned to the controller face buttons and the others being the equipment of weapon, armor and ranged, and while it’s tempting to go for straight power over anything else, it’s better to find things that suit your play style.

The big semi-mystery of Minecraft Dungeons, though, is what this has to do with Minecraft. It’s a fun, light action-RPG, sure, and the world needs more games parents can play with their kids, but Minecraft is a skin draped over the action rather than having any real effect on the game’s design. Everything looks right but that’s as far as it goes. Not a single block in the game is breakable and there’s nothing to build. This could just as easily have been My First Diablo as anything else, and the Minecraft license ends up feeling like a check box filled in on the marketing list.

Strays are undead Skeletons that wander the frozen biomes of Minecraft . Their skeleton is an icy gray , and they wear ragged armor from their former lives. They’re terrifying in combat thanks to their long-range attacks and Slowness that bogs the player’s movement speed, making escape next to impossi

Now Minecraft has no overarching objective, so it instantly challenges McGonigal’s claim that a goal is required in a game. But actually, minecraft Walkthrough ’s main goal is composed of multiple smaller goals. It doesn’t have a “grand” objective, but it has smaller objectives, little bite-size incentives that replace each other over time and take the role of a larger objective. First you collect resources, then you build a house, then you survive the night, then you wake up and continue, but each with steadier and steadier increases in scope and scale. Even better, there’s no one direction to go. Being able to explore in multiple regions and build whatever you feel is satisfactory is open-ended. You are given tools and no direction, yet you are still creating. You’re making the direction. This is a massive undertaking, one that changes everything that anyone knew about videogames before, and it’s a bigger embodiment of the “sandbox” mentality than Grand Theft Auto has even been.

The other type of item is accessory and each one grants a different skill. The feather, for example, does a quick roll that stuns an enemy, while the soul cube lets out a powerful arcane jet of energy blasting through everything in its path. A bundle of wheat summons an attack-llama, there are healing pendants, berzerk mushrooms, magic shields and plenty more to turn up. These let you create a personalized loadout of three skills, defining character class by what you choose to carry. The more powerful accessories are powered by souls, which are released and automatically gathered as you take out monsters, but it doesn’t take many to fill the bar. The skills are there to be used rather than hoarded.

Think about when you were a youngster and you went to the sandbox at the park. You weren’t told “build a sand castle” by your parents. You had your shovel, bucket and action figures and you did what you wanted. Fundamentally, you had no real goal; the end result was completely secondary to what you were doing to reach it. That’s the idea of a “sandbox” game: you aren’t being told what to do and you can feel free to express yourself creatively. You can break the status quo and go to places that you couldn’t otherwise. It’s not based around how much is given for you to do; it’s based around giving you tools and letting you discover what to do yourself.