Gameplay

Gameplay in Minecraft consists mainly of adding and destroying blocks in a randomly generated world. There are several different types of blocks, some of which perform special functions like spreading or falling down because of gravity.

With these blocks, players create large constructions such as castles, roads, buildings and skywalks, along with forms of artwork. A chessboard or giant picture rarely goes amiss on a server. Not only have users designed buildings, Pixel Art, and caves, but also mini-sports. Using the current in-game features, users have put them to clever use. An example of a Minecraft sport is Spleef.

Notch has added a Survival and Creative modes, and is planning on adding Adventure mode and other modes to give Minecraft more gameplay. Minecraft is currently considered purely a sandbox construction game. Users who have bought the game have access to the full version of the game. This version is as bug-free as possible, and the user can still get updates. Crafting, Farming, new blocks, and a more configurable map generator are all included in this version. This game used to be in Beta, Alpha, Indev, and Infdev, until the 18th of November, 2011.

Game Modes
There are multiple modes in the game and these are survival, creative, and hardcore. In the level.dat, survival mode is gametype=0, and creative is gametype=1. Hardcore is survival with the addition of hardcore=1 (for survival and creative, hardcore=0). This knowledge allows hacking to change game modes by editing your world's level.dat.

Survival
In this mode, players have to gather all their materials to build things, craft things and gain experience points. There is a health bar, a hunger bar, an armor bar, an inventory and, when underwater, an oxygen bar.

Creative
The player will have access to an infinite amount of all blocks and items available. Players are invulnerable and do not have health, armor, or hunger and can fly. There are mobs in the world, as opposed to the original classic version.

In the creative mode, the only way for the player to die, is to fall into the void.

Adventure (speculation of a future update)
Not much is known about this mode except that there will be a health bar and an inventory, speculation is that blocks cannot be destroyed or placed. Only items can be used.

Hardcore
In this mode, which plays in the same way as Survival mode, the difficulty level is permanently set to "Hard" and the map must be deleted upon the player's death. Hardcore was introduced as part of the beta 1.9 pre-release and is playable in the full version of Minecraft.

Technically, hardcore is a game mode modifier rather than a mode. However without cheating you can get only "Hardcore Survival". To get "Hardcore Creative" mode, you need to editing your world with external tools. There is almost no visible difference between "Hardcore Creative" and "Non-hardcore Creative", because in Creative mode the only way to die is to fall into the Void. Because of this, "Hardcore" usually refers to "Hardcore Survival".

Here is a Hardcore Mode Tutorial.

Table of game modes
Below is a brief summary of the different available features in each game mode. This table also includes Minecraft Classic, which is the older, but free version of Minecraft.