Mythruna, Role Crafting Minecraft Clone
Titles aside, Mythruna is allegedly more than a mere Minecraft clone. According to the designers, it is a rather ambitious project to create an, and I quote here: "extensive world building, crafting, and sandbox elements with just a touch of role-playing. When completed, Mythruna will be a unique gaming experience." I'm not sure what part of that is unique from Minecraft, which is, after all, a world building sandbox crafting game, but perhaps the devil is in the details.
Development is in the early stages at the moment, but you can download and play the pre-alpha builds if you're curious. I was curious, so I downloaded one such build and played with it for a bit. The first thing I noted was the fact that Mythruna calls itself a 'role crafting game'. This strikes me as both cheeky and endearing, sort of like a little brother stealing your Barbie and pretending it's an Action Man.
Having made that dig, the first impressions of the game are good. It's a heck of a lot slicker than Minecraft, and there's no compressed 16 x 16 textures to make you hate your eyes. Also, when you begin the game, you do so in what appears to be a world that existed before you got there. I like that. I like that very much.
See that grass in the foreground of that screenshot? The grass that puts me in mind of the Minecraft Wild Grass mod? Well guess what - that grass waves in the wind, suckers. Heck yeah. Color me impressed. There are also chairs, which is nice and makes me feel all at home. A world without chairs is a strange and foreign land indeed.
At the moment there's really not too much you can do with the game besides place a handful of blocks and destroy the existing structures by left clicking on them whilst holding dirt, but I'd say that this is a game worth watching. Some serious effort has already gone into correcting superficial issues that continue to plague Minecraft, and if they're really serious about injecting an actual storyline into the sandbox experience, then I for one would be excited to see that. If there's anything wrong with Minecraft (and there isn't) its that it all begins to feel pointless after a time. It's just you, building structures to impress yourself with, and perhaps other people if you share them. Of course, Minecraft is far from a finished product and its certainly not fair to compare the theory behind one game that isn't halfway developed with a game that actually exists.
