I think of an MVP as the least you need to do to demonstrate an unmet demand for a product or concept. For a game, that means demonstrating a gameplay concept that may be worthwhile to expand upon.
Thinking about early Minecraft, the creative version became an MVP in my mind when it got multiplayer and a variety of building blocks; the gameplay element there being working with others to create artwork. The survival version became an MVP when it added monsters and an infinitely generating world, which allowed exploration and, well, survival.
But if you look at Skycraft today, it's billed as a "creative voxel adventure game", but there's no adventure. It fails the basic test of what defines a game: there is no gameplay. It needs some sort of basic challenge to overcome, goal to reach, or ruleset by which to reach a win or lose state (to be clear, it doesn't need to be a fully fleshed out concept or demonstration: Pong is an MVP for a tennis game).
Skycraft does, however, demonstrate a very cool block-building generator done in HTML5. That's a very cool tech demo, but it's not yet a proof-of-concept of a game.
To get to an MVP, it needs to add some gameplay elements. If it's supposed to be an adventure game, there needs to be some sort of undertaking or goal to work towards played out through an experience the player has.
But beyond that, if you're going to try to create something that's a new spin on Minecraft and show there's an unmet demand for it, I think you have to demonstrate at least one gameplay element that Minecraft doesn't have. Skycraft doesn't have that yet.
And there's definitely a strong case to be made that there's a demand for games like Minecraft that have a different vision: there's at least a half-dozen "ripoffs", just as many (if not more) games that can directly trace their lineage through Minecraft, and hundreds of mods for Minecraft proper that radically change how the game works.
I almost wonder if you are interested in creating a new take on Minecraft, the easiest way to get to an MVP is to create a mod for it first and worry about the engine after you have something that's fun.
> And there's definitely a strong case to be made that there's a demand for games like Minecraft that have a different vision
Minecraft-GTA mashup, maybe? That is, voxel-based riff on GTA street-view topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5810285). Or maybe iCEnhancer-based Minecraft? I'd pay cash money for that.
Thinking about early Minecraft, the creative version became an MVP in my mind when it got multiplayer and a variety of building blocks; the gameplay element there being working with others to create artwork. The survival version became an MVP when it added monsters and an infinitely generating world, which allowed exploration and, well, survival.
But if you look at Skycraft today, it's billed as a "creative voxel adventure game", but there's no adventure. It fails the basic test of what defines a game: there is no gameplay. It needs some sort of basic challenge to overcome, goal to reach, or ruleset by which to reach a win or lose state (to be clear, it doesn't need to be a fully fleshed out concept or demonstration: Pong is an MVP for a tennis game).
Skycraft does, however, demonstrate a very cool block-building generator done in HTML5. That's a very cool tech demo, but it's not yet a proof-of-concept of a game.
To get to an MVP, it needs to add some gameplay elements. If it's supposed to be an adventure game, there needs to be some sort of undertaking or goal to work towards played out through an experience the player has.
But beyond that, if you're going to try to create something that's a new spin on Minecraft and show there's an unmet demand for it, I think you have to demonstrate at least one gameplay element that Minecraft doesn't have. Skycraft doesn't have that yet.
And there's definitely a strong case to be made that there's a demand for games like Minecraft that have a different vision: there's at least a half-dozen "ripoffs", just as many (if not more) games that can directly trace their lineage through Minecraft, and hundreds of mods for Minecraft proper that radically change how the game works.
I almost wonder if you are interested in creating a new take on Minecraft, the easiest way to get to an MVP is to create a mod for it first and worry about the engine after you have something that's fun.