I’m not sure if it’s just a huge world that circles around or if it just keeps on randomly generating terrain as you go ad infinitum, but as anybody who has played Minecraft – PE knows all too well there’s nothing more disappointing than hitting the invisible walls of its tiny world.
Survivalcraft is an absolutely massive world, and for the life of me I cannot find its boundaries. So what exactly is it about Survivalcraft that puts it ahead of Minecraft – PE? Well first and foremost is scope. And, despite our initial hesitations, this is anything but a cheap knock-off attempting to cash in on the Minecraft craze, and is in fact the best mobile sandbox game of its kind that you can get at this time. That game is called Survivalcraft ($3.99), and despite being made by just a single person it bests even Mojang’s official mobile offering and even does some unique things to set itself apart from the pack. With that said, a new Minecraft-y game has been ripping up the charts lately and even jockeying for position with Mojang’s official Minecraft – Pocket Edition ($6.99).
It gets very easy to dismiss these games when so many bad ones are churned out at such an incredible pace. I can tell you from personal experience working at TouchArcade that with dozens of these kinds of games coming out every week it gets very hard to decide which ones are worth exploring and which ones should just be written off as the cheap clones that they are. “Minecraft" is the new “Angry" or “Temple" in terms of latest SEO hotness, I guess you could say. But in the mobile space especially, 99% of anything that gets released that’s reminiscent of Minecraft is just a crappy knock-off and cash-in attempt that’s of little value to anyone. I mean heck, even Minecraft was inspired by similar games that came before it. Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with taking heavy inspiration from a game. There’s no doubt that Mojang’s Minecraft has become a nearly unfathomable success over the past few years, and as with anything that becomes popular there’s a seemingly unending line of people that rush to ride the coattails of that success.