I just remembered the not so small detail in Terraria that you can cut a small living Bunny into pieces with basically any weapon and in the next patch you can strap dynamite on them and make them explode.

Perhaps Terraria is not the best game for a small child after all.

Whippersnapper! I was 29.

You should have showed the kid some of the games you play, he gets bombarded with modern games all day from all sides, you could have showed him something he would never heard of. I showed my nephews Serious Sam, Worms World Party and LEGO Racers. Speaking of Minecraft and LEGO, LEGO Rock Raiders could be a winner.

Okay, so, maybe I'll do this post since I'm bored, there's no ongoing Mafia game to do anything with, I don't feel like reading or playing, etc etc etc

First of all, there's several versions of Minecraft, but mostly two spring to mind:
- Java Edition: Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, obviously needs Java (it'll download its own runtimes and update them itself, or you can install Java yourself and maintain it), arguably the most mature version, filled to the brim with mods, has servers all around, etc. Also has the official launcher which needs to sign in at least once to a Mojang account that purchased the game before you can play offline (or get a cracked launcher to always play offline even if the main launcher breaks down). You can only play with other players of the Java Edition. I recommend buying this version over the other unless you want to play the game on anything but a PC, or your friend/kid plays on the Bedrock Edition instead.
- Bedrock Edition: Runs on practically everything else, including current generation of consoles (except Sony consoles) and mobile phones. Available on PC only through Windows 10, and yes, it has to be Windows 10, so you can't play it from a Windows 7 machine (but you can do that with Java Edition). Unlike the Java Edition, it's coded in C++, which makes the game a heck ton FASTER, but modding is not mature and is already turned into a market through which Microsoft profits. Also buggier than Java Edition and doesn't stay true to it most of the time, but for all intents and purposes the experience is near identical, just not 100% identical to Java Edition. No custom launchers so it won't play until it verifies you own the thing, must use Xbox services for multiplayer (even LAN, unlike Java Edition). Some versions have some features and some don't (PC and Android gets custom skin support but you will have to buy your skins on the Switch).

Either way, you get Minecraft. There are three modes to Minecraft (only two on Bedrock):
- Survival mode: You start from scratch and have to work your way up to anything useful, really. You'll need to have a shelter, permanent house, or enough defense to fend off the attacking monsters at night, and mine underground, craft things, farm stuff, etc. Most of the game is usually found out by online guides such as the Minecraft wiki, in the Bedrock Edition there is a help section that gives you some quick information on stuff, and in either version, crafting now has guides that gradually unlock new recipes as you find the necessary materials. You basically can't god-mode in Survival.
- Creative mode: You can god-mode in Creative however. You don't have to worry about health or hunger, or day and night. You can open up the inventory and grab ANY block you want to your hotbar and start building the sand castle you always wanted to build as a kid with infinite resources. To help you with that, double pressing the jump button enables your character to fly, you can fly up by holding jump or lower by holding the sneak button, and creative flying is made in a way that makes building large projects way too easy. There is nothing stopping you from say, building a mall, a train station, or even Paris if you're dedicated enough. This is basically the infinite LEGO mode of the game.
- Hardcore mode: Only available in Java Edition for some reason. It's exactly like Survival mode, but the game is locked to the Hard difficulty and if you die, THAT'S IT. Kiss the Hardcore world and whatever you did in it goodbye.

So let's say you decide to start a Survival mode world. This is unarguably the only part of the game in which you may need to look up guides to know what you're doing. Let's just say you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT. The game has an End, but when playing Minecraft the goal isn't to see the game's End, the goal is to do whatever pleases you and the game facilitates that. You can expand your home, you can explore new territory, you can search for those rare woodland mansions or ocean monuments, you can go find a badlands biome and strike gold, etc. But ahem, the only problem about survival worlds is that their start is usually a scripted affair that you need to do in order to actually grow and do the things you want.

When you start a survival world, first you MUST find a tree or two. Punch the wood out of the trees, and call your inventory, and put the wood block in any of the four crafting slots to get four wood planks, and then put each wood plank in each crafting grid slot (or consult the crafting guide) to build a crafting table. The crafting table is necessary for a LOT of things in MineCRAFT, all the good recipes must be done with it as it's the only block to provide the 3x3 crafting grid instead of your character's 2x2 grid, so you'll need it. Craft sticks by putting a wood plank over the other in any crafting grid, and then consult the crafting guides for a wooden pickaxe. If you see any coal anywhere around you (coal is basically a block of stone with black marks on it), go mine them with your pickaxe to get coal, which you can craft torches with, otherwise just dig into the ground and randomly mine through the stone to find a cache of coal. Also mine stone so you can build stone tools and a furnace. During that time, either cut down more trees (build an axe to speed things up) or mine stone, and use what you grabbed to make a makeshift shelter, light up both inside and outside with torches, build a door so you can enter and exit the shelter, and hide there during the night. You will hear noises of various monsters, calculated footsteps, etc. These monsters are obviously out to kill you. Zombies excel in bum rushing you in groups (and will attempt to break down your doors on Hard difficulty if they know you're hiding in the shelter), skeletons are great with bows and arrows, spiders have agility on their side, do not EVER look at endermen (tall, black creatures) without at least diamond armor on you, never get near witches without potions...and also avoid that wacky green creature. That wacky green creature, the creeper, is a literal walking bomb that will explode in your face if you let it. Or explode behind you, that's even worse. Thus, it is imperative to always listen to your surroundings in the game, as you can hear footsteps approaching you and react accordingly. When the night ends, the skeletons and zombies burn up and the spiders stop caring about you, so you still have to worry about the creepers, at least until they despawn, which they inevitably will.

If you're lucky, you built your house in such a way that you can spend the first night mining, hopefully you come out with iron ore that you then smelt in the furnace for iron ingots, building the even better iron tools and reliable (for the time being) iron armor. But anyway, that was about it for the semi scripted Day 1. You are free to break off the norm and even encouraged to, but be ready for any rocky beginnings as a result.

When you start a creative world...well, that's up for your imagination. Do note you can also use creative mode worlds as tests for things you would love to try in survival without dying or ending up with a horrible result. Using commands, you can switch from creative to survival and back to creative. You can also control various little things about the game. You can prevent time from ever advancing, for example.

And this post isn't even everything there is in Minecraft, summarized. The vanilla game is just that huge, and you can make it even bigger with mods if you wish.

There apparently was a way to mod vanilla minecraft to do local split screen coop; i meant to track it down and get it working, but I have multiple gaming machines and accounts for minecraft so I just didn't end up bothering,

Actually been enjoying teaching my 6 year old nephew how to play grim dawn seeing as he's already playing Diablo 3 on switch (got to undermine blizzards claws before we lose anouther young mind to 'oh always online DRM is just how everything is :P').

Worms world party I second, don't see how Rime is enjoyeable being that it's a puzzle game maybe that's it, but the fact it's not coop or anything *shrugs.

I have a few I cycle through though...
Aqua Kitty Milk Mine Defender
Broforce
Don't starve might work (wouldn't know they aren't releasing multi for us 3nd class digital citizens)
Double Dragon Trilogy
Dungeon Defenders has local split screen coop, but interest may vary
Guantlet always went down well
Spelunky is fun
Stardew Valley with 2 computers is great
Tesla vs Lovecraft (an arcadey top down mob blasting game with a small amount of guns spiced up by random perks & progression)
Neurovoider is good for coop team spirited play
and lastly I sometimes have up 'open red alert' it's not quite the original rules but it is a fairly basic workable rts to start them off on.




So yeah as to minecraft there's all sorts of party game servers that can be fun (Hide & Go Seek for example).
My young niece use to love building towns together and doing it in creative just doesn't have the same feel as having to work with what you can get pooling your knowledge and resources.

1) Collect stuff
2) try to do crafting
3) night falls
4) get killed by monsters
5) quit

Java edition + creative mode!

I know two "kids" (who have grown to young adults already over the years) who have played Minecraft for many many years, and still seem to do it once in a while. And to me it appears it is almost the only game they ever play (one of them sometimes played also Geometry Dash). EDIT: So to answer to your question: maybe your nephew doesn't need to be introduced to any other games by you. I tried to present some other games to those two "kids" but no they always seemed to go back to Minecraft.

To me it appears they were and are fascinated the most by the ability to build houses etc., a bit like a lego game. They'd use hours to build replicas of real-life locations, like the summer cottage they visited in the summers etc.

Maybe they also played the survival mode or whatever it is where you can actually die, but the main pull of the game for them wasn't "challenge", but being able to create and build stuff in the game, and then wandering around inside their created buildings/castles/whatever.

When I tried it, I quickly became bored because it didn't feel enough of a "game" to me. I guess I need the challenge from games, maybe I'm not the target audience of visual novels or walking simulators either.

I spent about a month trying to get into Minecraft, but found it was very unfriendly to play - constantly checking the wiki to figure out why monsters are getting into my lit underground stronghold, finding out "recipes" key to making essential things, and how come villagers aren't getting it on.

Eventually, I just gave up on it. Minecraft is an awful game that doesn't reward you for putting in effort. The concept of Minecraft is interesting, but needs serious refinement and polish to be fun. I might check out Hytale when that comes out.

Resurrected by spam!

I hate to be that person and I know it won't make much sense but... You're playing it wrong. Seriously, Minecraft is completely different than RPG, FPS or a Strategy game. It's what YOU want it to be.

Example: I stopped playing survival completely and only play creative nowadays, often without even creating a world per se (using superflat option when creating a world). And then I just build there, sometimes using tutorials, sometimes trying doing it on my own.

Example 2: I have one nice creative world with a mountainous island I called "Earthsea" (I found it in biome finder on chunk base. Check it out if you haven't already, just type biome finder in google). When I've done something important in my life that I was feeling particularly unmotivated to do, I use this world to commemorate it. Whether by building a fountain, palace, statue, park or whatever I learned to build in Example 1, then putting a sign on top of it and writing down what it commemorates. I won't say I quit smoking this way but it definitely helped A LOT in my particular case.

On the other hand I won't say you should force yourself to play it, because if you have 0 fun with it no matter what you do than it might be that it's just not a game for you.


Sh!t I didn't notice it was a necro.

Bull. I tried to make a castle town, but despite putting in lighting, farms, and a ceiling, the residents kept dying. Adventuring to collect materials felt pointless, because the game kept neutering my creations or made them excessively tedious to attend to. I honestly tried to understand the rules of the game and follow them, but it kept disappointing me.

So much for "It's what YOU want it to be." I liked Stardew Valley and Subnautica, but Minecraft? When I put my time and effort into a game, I expect the game to give back something. Far as I am concerned, Minecraft refused to uphold its side of the bargain.

You can keep your Minecraft.

That's fair enough.

All I was trying to say is that playing minecraft with the expectation of getting rewarded the way you get rewarded in, say, RPG is kind of missing the point of this game really.

I'm not that type either. but Minecrat can be extremelly fun! I mostly play survival/hardcore but as someone said earlier, understanding the game (and break it) is the cool part.

Bored at nights? go out and kill monsters. It will give lots of XP and some drops, wich can be used to upgrade your stuff.

I can recomend anyone looking for a challange, a map called "skyblock", where you basically start the game on a little sky island, with next to no resources.

Also, on version 1.7.10 there is a mod called Orespawn. On survival you can be one-hit-killed at any time by giant monsters, until you can upgrade your gear and hit-kill them... You can have small dragons as a pet and ride them when they grow up!
Lots of "dungeons" to explore, other dimentions to visit, dinosaurs, volcanoes, girlfriends that can help you killing mobs (the boyfriends throw game controllers at mosters!), fight against the kraken, and many other creatures. The mod is not well polished but works fine for the most part.
Did I mention you can ride the red giant bird from the Avatar movie? You can become Toruk-Macto yourself and one-hit-kill smaller monsters :D
Have so many good memorys with that mod...Oh, and big mosters fight between them!

Yes it is very popular with the mentally disadvantaged and the numerous grifters willing to take advantage of them.