Extra Guy writes: By now it’s apparent to most gamers on Xbox Live that the Indie Games channel is a modern-day Tin Pan Alley, buzzing with the frantic static of developers iterating and reiterating worn gaming concepts. Extra Guy has followed this phenomenon down the dim side street of Craftalikes, our term for games that look, play, feel, and even sound like Minecraft. It’s an exciting channel, full of potential, that often disappoints us with its rather uninspired brand of coyly-similar-to-Minecraft titles that add little or nothing to the concept. In a sense, Minecraft’s unpredictable success has been detrimental to future development of its own genre, as developers see money and not blocks in their eyes when they look upon what Notch and Mojang have made with cubes.
Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time before someone came along on the XBLIG channel and added something you couldn’t get just playing Minecraft. And while a plethora of Extra Guy commenters pointed out that a lack of Minecraft on 360 makes these clones permissible, I feel that the true test of worth in the 360 Craftalike genre is a game that encourages you to stop playing Minecraft, and start playing a new game.
Mojang’s Minecraft is one hell of a drug.
You build and you build and you build, and then you wonder where all your time has gone. So what if you want to shake your Minecraft habit and try something new? Rather than go cold turkey with a completely different genre, why not try one of these five games to get a Minecraft-like high?
GG3 takes a panicked walk through the zombie-infested world of Castleminer Z. Its story can be told in just a few images, instead of an entire journal, because reading can be boring sometimes.
Castleminer Z is the result of a trend that has flooded the zone indie Xbox Live. A tendency injurious to industry and showing opportunism that many breeders show mainly in stores by Google and Apple for their smartphones. When Minecraft became popular, all players seemed to want a copy to play on Xbox. It was then that the indie section was flooded with clones of Mojang's game, which Castleminer Z stood.
