When Minecraft hit the scene it was a huge hit. Since then, many have tried to copy it. Voxelized is no different.
The developer of Voxelized has had a rocky history already. When his other game, Journey of the Light, proved to be a scam, he vanished, leaving Voxelized abandoned. 5 months after it was stated the game would enter Beta in “2-3 weeks”, it finally starts to get updated again. After having played the original (alpha), abandoned version, I’ve returned to give this “updated” (beta) version a try.
So Minecraft is a game that has… Wait, I’m not here to talk about Minecraft. It’s pretty easy to get them confused, you see, when Voxelized is pretty much a stripped down version of the hit game. No, it doesn’t matter how much you put in the “yellow flashing letters” on the launch screen saying it is “Not Minecraft”, that in and of itself is like Minecraft.
In the original version of Voxelized I played, the game played in a 1024×768 window. You could see everything around you, and while there was a completely non-functional inventory system, there was a bit of promise. In this now updated version, that’s all gone. You now get a Minecraft launch screen, a stripped down Minecraft world creation screen, and fancy that! You also get a stripped down Minecraft. You now get to play the game in a tiny little screen too, nowhere near the original 1024×768 window. If you decide to take a screenshot though… It is revealed to you that the game actually has a larger window, it’s all just completely black. That, or it’s just a product of the engine it’s running on.
While making your world, you’ll have to be careful. Make it too large and the game just flat out crashes, or at least it did for me. Tab out of the window while it’s trying to generate the world? Crash. Considering you only get two options when creating your world (at this time), one would think that at least these would be less buggy. Yes, the game is in Early Access, I get at least that much, but if you’re trying to be Minecraft, I would imagine making the world is a pretty basic function. At least naming your world seems to work fine.
So once you enter the game, you’re plopped into the very corner of the map. I’m not 100% sure on how it’s generated, but the world does at least seem to be somewhat randomly generated. Granted, this might be from some asset pack used (there is a pack credited for being “based on” in the credits), but at least it is seeming to be a bit randomly generated.
When you start moving around, one of the things will stand out to you is the head bobbing. The head bobbing is horrendous and there is no way to turn it off. It becomes especially noticeable if you decide to go into flying mode, go up a bit, and then start walking around some. The bobbing started to get so bad for me that I actually had to close the game so that I didn’t get horribly motion sick.
Speaking of the flying mode, you can use it to get above the sky level. This lets you get a nice view of the moon/sun, with the other one being available should you dig to the bottom layer. Once you’re done looking around up there (you can’t build anything), you can simply turn off flying mode to drop back down. Just be careful if you decide to walk around in flying mode and you aren’t at the top layer, as the previously mentioned head bob is exceptionally bad while you’re doing so.
Voxelized does have an inventory system, at least in a way. The “inventory” system is really just scrolling with your mouse wheel and trying to figure out what block you’re on. One of the blocks you can choose is dynamite. While it does nothing if just placed, should you try and destroy it, it does a short countdown and then explodes. This said dynamite is extremely good at breaking the game as well.
Should you place the dynamite too close to the bottom layer, it tries to explode like normal, but instead just expands out because there aren’t enough remaining blocks for it to explode down. This causes a smoke plume to rise up from where it was placed, and if you keep trying, the smoke plume will just get bigger. After finding this, I decided to do a little more digging – namely, digging down to the very bottom layer. This is where the game really breaks. Placing a dynamite block and then having it explode on the very bottom layer causes some graphical glitches below the blocks down there. Once you try and place another block, the game doesn’t know what to do anymore. Upon placing the next block, my game could no longer place or delete anything, with the only thing left to me was extremely laggy movement and flying.
Voxelized, in its current beta state, is hardly better off than it was in the alpha state. While the alpha state had infinite falling through a hole, the beta version now has game-breaking dynamite. The promised “features” for Voxelized include, you guessed it, stuff that is already in Minecraft – NPCs, enemies, pets, survival, and so on. While you can “find” blocks that seem to represent diamonds, sapphires, and so on, there doesn’t seem to be much point to them as you don’t have a limited inventory and can just place these “gem” blocks whenever you want. The window for playing in is so exceptionally small and does not play well at all with the Steam overlay.
No matter how much it tries to claim otherwise, Voxelized is just trying to be Minecraft, and is not doing a good job at it. There are plenty of other Minecraft clones out there that actually work, so unless drastic changes are made to Voxelized to actually make it unique, I suggest not really even bothering with trying to play it.
Voxelized Initial Thoughts
Don’t play it, there are better Minecraft clones out there… And Minecraft itself
This article is based on Voxelized ver. 0.9.5.
