Top Ten Minecraft Texture Packs

Minecraft texture packs are downloadable files that alter the way that Minecraft looks and feels. Some texture packs change the game’s graphics in minor ways, simply altering colours in the world around you. Others add new looks to everything, from the dirt and stone blocks to the tools and monsters that attack you. Minecraft texture packs are great, changing the way the game looks, and are even better when used in conjunction with mods for Minecraft.

Now, before we get started on the top ten Minecraft texture packs, keep in mind that you can browse through the entire selection of Minecraft texture packs on the Minecraft Wiki, which shows all verified packs and contains links to their forums and official websites.

The Arabesque Pack: This Middle Eastern themed texture pack re skins most of the basic blocks in the game, while still keeping the typical Minecraft feel. Water and lava have custom animations, pine trees have brown branches, and birches have multiple trunks, all of which give the game a completely new and refreshing feel.

Last Days is a very dark, depressing texture pack that is supposed to represent an apocalyptic landscape, and does a very good job of doing that. While it does make finding monsters much more surprising and scary, as the spider's red face leering out of dark caverns is more than enough to make me jump, the idea could have gone much further. Still, it is a very good effort, and as such ranks at number 9 for a good idea and relatively good skins and textures,

Tronic snags the number eight spot. Tronic is a very clean, simple texture pack that is not one of the many designed to simply improve CPU performance; instead, it seeks to create a digital feel in Minecraft, and in many ways succeeds. All of the natural forming blocks look very clean, and flow well together, but the animals seem to break the cleanness of the texture pack and ruin the feel. Still, the texture pack is very well done and looks great.

The Pixeludi Pack is a texture pack that redesigns Minecraft to look like a retro RPG game, with a dark feeling and deep colours. The health and armour bar have been redone masterfully, and I love the way that the inventory and new icons look. This texture pack was announced by Notch, the creator of Minecraft, and the only reason that it is ranking #7 on this list is because the texture pack does not change the game dramatically; instead, it shifts the feel of the game subtly.

Jolicraft changes the normal Minecraft feel to one of a different, fairy tale world, with soft colouring and cosy looking homes. The monsters look a but more threatning, with more blood and deranged faces, and while the texture pack is not HD, it changes the feel of the game enough to warrant a #6 ranking on this list.

The Photo Realism pack is designed to make Minecraft look real, and does the job very well. However, it is a serious texture pack, and makes the game look so good you feel bad chopping down the trees and digging into the grass. It is an HD texture pack, and looks positively amazing, but is more for screen shots and videos than actual game play.

The Minecraft 4 Kids pack is a great texture pack that is kid friendly and very well done, seeming to be a Saturday morning cartoon. While using this texture pack, I half expected the animals to strike up a conversation to me about life lessons, and then sing a song. If you have younger siblings or children who want to play Minecraft, slap this texture pack on and let them have fun; besides that, this texture pack really is overshadowed by better cartoon style texture packs. Since Minecraft is supposed to be accessible to all, this allows the next generation to get hooked as well.

Number three goes to Glimmer's Steampunk, which is a beautifully crafted texture pack that completely redoes every single block in the game, and even gives new looks to icons in the game. For any fans of this style of science fiction, or those entranced by the dark, semi-Gothic look, this is definitely a good texture pack to download. One thing that really stands out about this texture pack is the way it makes large creations and sculptures look.

Ovo's Rustic Pack takes number two, giving Minecraft a homestead style with dulled, realistic colours that can be really breathtaking. The wilderness looks much more wild, with wild grass sprouting up everywhere, and wood and stone blocks looking much more medieval. All in all, this is a great texture pack that alters the game in very noticeable ways while still leaving the basic feel of Minecraft.

PureBDCraft is my personal favourite, because it goes above and beyond other texture packs. Instead of simply tweaking the regular game's looks, or finding inspiration from other games to change the graphics, the developer of this texture pack completely redid everything in the game, even re skinning the mobs and giving them actual faces, which can be quite enjoyable while fighting them. Overall, it gave the game a complete cartoon sort of look, but it was so complete and well done that it easily achieved the first place ranking on this list.