For whatever reason, Mojang and Nintendo don’t seem to be interested in pursuing a relationship that would allow the massively popular Minecraft to make an appearance on Nintendo consoles, and seems even less likely now that the developer has been sold to Microsoft. It’s unfortunate for fans of both companies to see the disinterest in establishing ties, but in the meantime indie developers have seized the opportunity to deliver something similar that might satiate Minecraft fans’ opportunity to craft their own worlds on Nintendo systems. Cube Creator 3D for the 3DS is one of these titles. Big John Games does a fine job of creating a Minecraft-esque experience on the 3DS. It’s not as diverse as the game it emulates, but it’s worth giving a shot if you’re looking for a portable block building experience.

The game has two modes. The first mode is survival, in which you’re pitted in a randomly generated area where you can take whatever environment lies around you and create and build your own world. There’s no real story to the game - it’s mostly a you versus the wild scenario in which the goal of the game is to build environments that will help you and will hinder the likes of bears, mummies and other creatures whose goal is to take you out. Playing through this mode was tough for me at first, but once I got used to how the game played I was fine.

But I think out of the two modes the game provides, creative mode is far more enjoyable. Unlike in survival mode, where you have to craft items together, all items are available at your disposal from the beginning. You choose from a desert, forest (like in Survival mode) or snow area and you can build right from the get go with no crafting or enemies to impede the world you want to create. I had more fun doing this as I felt survival was nothing more than just a diversion to get to what these sort of games are really about- creating unique structures that you can share. It’s a shame, then, that there’s no real way to send your levels to someone else to search and explore.

One issue I had were the controls. They can be pretty annoying at first. To me, the right circle pad should always be used to move around, and the New 3DS’ left nub should be used for camera adjustment. Well, the default settings for this are the other way around. Thus, when I first started the game I was completely annoyed with the controls. Thankfully, this can be switched around in the options, but one has to wonder why this was the default control scheme in the first place. The other issue I had were the size of the fields you worked upon. In Minecraft, one of the appeals of the game are its large worlds that can take a long while to fully explore. For Cube Creator 3D, it’s generated worlds only take a couple of minutes to venture back and forth from. This might have something to do with the 3DS’ own hardware capabilities, but I found this to be pretty disappointing.

For me, creating, crafting, and building worlds in this kind of game are fun, but something that doesn’t hook me completely. But even with that, I had fun with Cube Creator 3D. The idea of creating your own environment is fun, and the game’s creative mode helps you accomplish those goals. The other mode, survival, isn’t as fun, and I do wish the game had more larger environments and more items to craft and choose from. But for a game that wishes to fill the need of those who want the Minecraft experience on the 3DS, this is probably one of the best to succeed in that regard.