Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is a free alternative to the popular game Minecraft. Make structures with friends, hang out in online chat, and enjoy battling with clans of players in this free-to-play voxel game!

Minecraft took the gaming world by storm with its extreme popularity and simple creativity. In Minecraft, you can use the world's 3d-pixels (called "voxels") to build structures of just about any size or shape. Creations range from faithful reproductions of real-life buildings to elaborate fantasy structures and even working computers that can do basic calculations using the game's physics engine. With a plethora of modes like survival, creative, and more, you can customize Minecraft to be whatever you want it to be.

Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is a re-creation of many of the core ideas of Minecraft. It's made by a different developer and optimized for phones. Most importantly, it's free, offering a temporary solution to anyone who wants to get a hint of the Minecraft experience without shelling out for the official game. Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is monetized through the purchase of in-game skins and cosmetics and the occasional in-game advertisement, allowing the developers to make some money without requiring an up-front purchase. It's a popular choice among kids, people without credit cards, and gamers who want to try Minecraft without spending money.

There are some big, important differences between Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft and Minecraft. First, and most importantly, Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is a big MMO. This means that just about anyone can show up and start messing with the things you build. Minecraft, on the other hand, gives you the ability to make small servers and create a little universe that's only accessible by you and your friends. This means that in the "real" game, you can protect your creations from antagonistic trolls. In Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft, there's no real way to stop random players from appearing and demolishing or building over your structures. The game is free, too, so there's an endless supply of new users who want to test things out and exercise their creative powers by demolishing things in a random part of the world.

As far as building goes, Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is a somewhat close clone of Minecraft. There are lots of types of blocks, all freely accessible in the game's unlimited creative mode, and you can quickly teleport just about anywhere on the map to start building. The voxels behave similarly to their Minecraft counterparts. The physics don't seem quite as well-tuned, however, and a few performance issues pop up occasionally. These might have something to do with the massively multiplayer world, but it's not clear.

The addition of clan wars, online chat, and other MMO-like features changes the way that Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft feels. Unlike Minecraft, which tends to be a game played in a small circle of friends, Planet Craft exposes you to hundreds or thousands of users at a time. You get the same sort of chat trolls that you'd expect in any free online chatroom populated by kids who can't afford Minecraft as well as a few other colorful sorts of people. In other words, if you're a parent, you might want to strongly consider buying real Minecraft for your kids and doing some research about servers and privacy. The extra investment is more than worth it in exchange for increased online safety.

In unlimited creative mode, Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft has few goals. This means that you're free to build whatever you want with no restrictions. You can fly, place unlimited voxels, and easily manipulate the world however you'd like. There's no right or wrong way to go about things. Just focus on having fun!

In survival mode, however, things are a little bit tricky. You'll have to start from scratch just like you would in a game of Minecraft. The big difference here is that Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft is a massively multiplayer world. With hundreds or thousands of other players, you'll have to go about things differently.

To start with, it's recommended that you put your base far away from everything. Really far. The closer your base is to valuable spawns and community hubs, the more likely you are to get discovered by other players. Being discovered is a big no-no since the other players will likely take all of the valuable things from your base and destroy it before leaving. This means that the best sorts of bases are caves with disguised entrances far away from anything of interest. If other players can't tell that your base is anything other than a bit of rock, they're more likely to leave it alone. 

Of course, you'll want to try to avoid leaving telltale signs of your presence by gathering resources too close to your base. You might want to build a bit of distance before harvesting wood to make your first pickaxe and farming meat from nearby animals. If there's a big bare patch of ground with no trees or cows, would-be raiders will be a lot more suspicious of activity and might begin searching in earnest.

The best way to play Mine Block Craft is with friends. The more of you there are, the better equipped you'll be to defend your bases from raiders and participate in the game's clan combat. You'll want to start small and gradually work your way up the food chain. In games like these, things like diamond armor aren't optional, they're mandatory. Showing up to battle with less than the best gear will give you a big disadvantage and make it much harder to achieve your goals.

While these tips apply mostly to survival mode, the concepts also work with creative mode. When building something that you want to last, try building in an unexpected, out-of-the-way place. This might mean making an underground cavern to hide your structure, picking a deserted area on the map, or disguising your building as a natural outcropping. Of course, the unlimited freedom of creative mode means that it's fairly likely that someone will find your stuff eventually, but trying to be sneaky can give you a few hours so you can finish it before you move on to your next project.

Are you a Planet Craft: Mine Block Craft expert? Is your clan recruiting? Did we miss any tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments below!