So today, I bought Vox from Indiegamestand. This marks the
third Minecraft clone-ish style game I have on Desura. (Guncraft and Sky
Nations are the other two.) I have really been enjoying checking out how each
developer puts their own spin on the whole block building style.
One of my more intelligent friends told me that there was a
time when all FPS games were called “Doom clones”. The point is, there is a
line in which those games stopped being clones and started being a new genre
all together. My question is this: where is that line? Are we approaching this
line with Minecraft clones? I must say I dislike using that word since I am
enjoying my Desura block builders, whereas I can no longer enjoy vanilla
Minecraft.
So what should this new genre be called? Voxel based block
builders? Voxel block games? VBGs?
I always play Minecraft modded now. Usually Volts or Tekkit. Doesn't seem as good when I go back to vanilla. I haven't actually tried any other "VBG's" though. Vox does look good though. Though I don't think any of this style of game will ever be as big as Minecraft in terms of popularity :P
Your right about no game like this being as popular as Minecraft, but some of them have original ideas which I have enjoyed. One standout would be Blockade Runner. Building spaceships is fun!