Minecraft Drawing Challenge
Tisa
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A talented Minecraft fan has created a unique and frightening work of art based upon the game's Warden enemies. These menacing creatures were just recently added to the game and look to be one of Minecraft's most resilient monster types.
While Minecraft is typically seen as being focused on relaxing, creative gameplay, there are plenty of opportunities for controller-gripping gameplay in the form of the game's many hostile NPCs. There are surface-level enemies like the pesky Creepers, Drowned, and Zombies, who will often destroy players' creations if not kept at bay. Things can get a bit more creepy and unsettling as more of the world is explored, however, as more difficult enemies like the Ender Dragon and Wither will pose a real challenge for gamers who aren't prepared to face them. Some of these monsters types, including Enderman, Husk, and Ghast (the subject of Minecraft's Uneasy Alliances achievement) are considered to be quite visually startling by players in addition to posing a considerable threat.
The newly added Warden NPC looks to be carrying on the Minecraft tradition of disturbing monster designs - a fact that was noticed and swiftly capitalized upon by Reddit user Working-Elevator-840. In a post shared to the Minecraft subreddit, Working-Elevator-840 shows off their interpretation of this hulking Lovecraftian beast. The sketch, which appears to have been drawn in either ink or pencil, depicts the faceless monster walking forward, surrounded by some sort of dark void. The only other object in the drawing is a small spider hanging above the Warden's head.
Minecraft fan art is nothing new, but this illustration will certainly leave a lasting impression on many viewers. Wardens are one of the more intimidating enemies in the game, and this drawing captures much of that in iconic details like the horns, open torso cavity, and general dark coloring. Interestingly enough, Working-Elevator-840 appears to have taken a few creative liberties with its design, making the giant enemy significantly slimmer and more human-like in its body proportions. The Warden in the drawing also looks to be walking much more elegantly than its in-game counterparts, who are blind and have been shown to throw themselves around clumsily.
Design incongruencies aside, this drawing clearly showcases a lot of talent, passion, and creativity. By highlighting the more horrifying and nightmarish elements of Minecraft, Working-Elevator-840 might just help some gamers see the title in a new light. However, many players might prefer to stay away from the Wardens for a while after seeing this scary image.
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Minecraft is a huge game; a financial behemoth, extremely popular, and the game itself is just gigantic. The only limiting factor to the game is the imagination of the player. Minecraft places you in the position of an avatar that allows you to explore an open world - mine for object and then use those objects to craft. Its simplistic graphics may at first turn you off from the game, but once you really dive into the complexity of the world it really is part of the charm. It is the perfect game to offer for an afterschool program. The students already love it - and it offers a great arena for learning. Even at its simplest, it forces students to utilize deductive/inductive reasoning as well as math and communication (when working in teams). For example in order to build one of the simplest objects in the game a wood axe the student must go through an entire process of steps:
This is only the beginning - Now that the students have an axe they must harvest more wood to build a simplistic house to live in. To make it more complicated there is a hunger mechanic and monsters that come out at night.
I taught Minecraft for the first time last semester, which was a blast. Not everything was successful, but I learned a lot. My first mistake was thinking the students would be "new" to the game or only a few of them would be familiar with it. My expectations were set far too low. The students absolutely blew my expectations out of the water. After the first day of class I had to rethink my entire syllabus. The students knew more about the game then I did. These are first through fourth graders that play the game for sometimes a few hours a day, watch youtube videos on it and talk about it with each other daily. So my first task of "building a simple house" that I thought would take 45 minutes was crushed within ten.
This semester I am trying something different. Each day will have a set of missions to complete in order. For example - for this week the first mission is to build the simple house again - but this time I added an additional four missions to the plan. To mix it up a bit further I am going to be taking several of the missions off screen - mission 2 requires students to complete and color a connect the dots of a minecraft avatar. As we move further along the missions will become more complicated, such as utilizing a material in-game called Redstone that allows you to build machines and incorporates logic gates/coding (even though they are unaware of it!).
So how did my plan workout? Really well in a lot of ways, not so well in a couple of others. The students really loved the missions. They were excited to see what the next mission had in store for them. The first mission - which I felt would take the longest - was completed in less then 10-15 minutes for most of the students. A couple even finished it in less than five! Tasked with building a simple house, they went above and beyond in a very short amount of time. Some houses had fireplaces and bookshelves placed so they seemed more homey. Other houses were built on top of trees, or in the sky floating on thin air. They were all very cool.
The second mission, which I was most excited about wasn't as well received by the students. Completing a connect-the dots of a Minecraft avatar. A couple of the students got really into it, but most did the bare minimum to quickly get back into the game. If I do this mission again next year, I am going to push it a little further back in the day towards mission 4 so that their excitement is a little more grounded. I will also make them color their drawing - the ones that I got back that were colored were definitely the neatest.
Mission 3 tasked students with building a wall for their house, for an extra challenge they were limited to using just 50 blocks. Some students stuck with the challenge and built very concise walls with the 50 blocks - while others built massive walls that dwarfed their house. I really enjoyed hearing the students counting out the blocks; most used multiplication to determine how many blocks they had placed out (even if they didn't realize it).
Once again I took the students "Off-Screen" for the fourth mission. They had to complete a matching puzzle - aligning physical Minecraft blocks with their name on a card. For example they had to find the Iron block out of 30 or so and place it above the Iron name on the card. It sounds very simple, but many of the blocks look alike and reading the names of the blocks can be difficult. The students all really enjoyed this challenge, it really tested their Minecraft knowledge. Only one or two students got the correct placement on the first try, most had to try multiple times which is great.
Finally for the fifth challenge - they got to destroy their house that they created using TNT, lava, water, or really whatever they wanted. For the students that took only 5-10 minutes on their house they really enjoyed this. I think they spent more time placing the TNT in just the right spot to get the most BANG! Of course some students spent a lot of time on their houses - so instead of destroying them they got to instead destroy some rocks or a tree of their choice.
Once they completed their missions they got to do freeplay. Groups of students formed and started working on worlds together. They showed each other what they knew. It was great to listen and watch what they were doing at this point, as it gave me a ton of insight into where they are in terms of skill.
For next week I plan on making the challenges more difficult. Perhaps putting time constraints on them so that we can spend more time on missions and less time on freeplay. Instead of just saying "build a house with xyz" a mission next week may be "Spend 15 minutes building a castle, at the end of the 15 minutes STOP!". That is the great thing about this program, I have the flexibility to completely change up my plans based on the class.
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