CastleMiner
Developer: DigitalDNA
Cost 3 dollars
And then there were three indie titles that sought to bring Minecraft to the Xbox 360. First FortressCraft(Performance is still awful despite a series of patches), then Total Miner(amazing and will only get better) and now CastleMiner from DigitalDNA.
I don’t really need to get into the nuts and bolts of the gameplay because I don’t have have to. CastleMiner is a virtual Fortresscraft twin in that there’s nothing to do but create huge structures. Except this time, there are more blocks and the performance is better, both visually and network wise. Instead, I’m going to rant about this:
There might be over 200 blocks, but the vast majority are locked upon purchase. A set is unlocked with you purchase and a few individual blocks are unlocked by your actions or playtime. However, the vast majority are only unlocked online: Play online with one random person, one friend, five friends, ten friends and twenty friends(don’t all have to be at the same time. I don’t like this at all.
I get it, digital DNA wants to this to be a social game. After all,most of their other titles seem to be as well and I have no problem with it. But advertising over 200 different blocks and then getting in the game and find you’ll have to spend tons of time unlocking all of them(literally as one of the blocks is 1000 hours played), is just plain idiotic. The reason is because Castleminer is up against very stiff competition in the Minecraft clone department, both of whom give all blocks out with no strings attached(Total Miner does in create mode), Fortresscraft even lets you create your own blocks. With Castle Miner bringing so little new to the table, hamstringing creativity to force social interaction is not a smart idea, especially considering if the Fortresscraft devs fix the performance issues, it’ll be a better online title than this is(It has a rate my server feature, for example) .
It might've helped if this screenshot showed something impressive.
In the end, get Castleminer if you’re a really social person who doesn’t want to put up with waiting for the performance issues of Fortresscraft to be fixed, or doesn’t care for the actual game half of Total Miner. Otherwise, I don’t really see much point in getting this game as it otherwise seems to be nothing more than a cash-in with little that positively differentiates itself from its peers.
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