The almost-sudden rise to fame of the game Minecraft was virtually unprecedented, so much that the original developer’s PayPal account was frozen due to suspicions regarding the sudden influx of money being deposited by fans who have come to acknowledge this game’s sheer genius. Being in a sandbox world, free to create something out of whatever is around you is something that taps to the DIY heart in us. People have always had that streak where they wish to be a carpenter, mason, or some kind of fabricator, molding and shaping things to their will and creating something beautiful and useful. Minecraft fulfills those fantasies, and Minecraft: Pocket Edition has been released to the mobile game market to provide all of that to a wider audience.

As with the original Minecraft for the PC, this one has the same features that give players a degree of freedom unseen in most other games, letting them build and create things out of their imagination. The need to mine and gather raw materials, then creating tools to help with the process is something that alludes to our prehistoric roots, back when man first invented stone tools and the wheel that spurred on the first stages of human technological development. It also has a survivalist element to it, especially since monsters and creepy crawlies come out when it’s dark.

Another cool thing with this version is that there is local wifi multiplayer, so you and a group of friends can play this game and coordinate projects together, which can then be saved after each session. Since part of Minecraft’s success is from its multiplayer component, there was no way that developers will skip it for the iOS. The levels are generated through seeding, so you may be able to get some good loot and share it with friends through the multiplayer. This makes for a very exciting game that really ticks the reward mechanism in the human brain.

Sadly, this game crashes like no one’s business, especially when you’ve fiddled with the game options. It’s too bad that you may want to tweak the settings anyway, so it will start being difficult to you anyway. Hopefully, updates will be made to fix this malady, but you’ll have to bear the stress and strain of frequent crashing as you play. It’s also not as simple and precise as controlling with keyboard and mouse. While the potential of the touch screen is obvious, you can sense that much of it is still untapped at this stage as it doesn’t do so well with this game. Aside from being kind of finicky and hard, the auto-jumping isn’t very automatic per se, so you may have trouble treading over obstacles and such.

This is a retail release that is still labeled as alpha, which ticks some pedantic people off who may be into software development due to this game’s loose use of such terminology. Paying for an alpha may not be a good idea, but Minecraft’s reputation precedes itself in this release. Minecraft: Pocket Edition is just what fans have been waiting for, so it has been delivered well enough. While it may still have flaws, perhaps the alpha label just means that more is yet to come and things can only get better.