A Mom is Making a Minecraft Alternative

Allison Huynh was tired of her kids getting nightmares from all of the blocky violence in Minecraft. So she made her own game.

MyDream is, like Minecraft, a creative building game with simple graphics. Unlike Minecraft, it’s not an orgy of pig and monster slaughter. All combat in the game is cordoned off into special battle arena blocks.

“My personal goal was to make a game I could enjoy with my kids,” Huynh told GamesBeat. “Minecraft wasn’t meeting my needs. My kids were having nightmares with Minecraft. It started out with it being very creative, but then they started shooting villagers. Villagers were getting killed. I’m a survivor of the Vietnam War, so I have a lot of issues with violence.”

Still, Huynh said she felt it was important to make a space for combat. It just happens in designated areas and allows the player to decide if they want to fight or not. I’ve never had a skeleton give me that courtesy.

“It’s a minor part of the game, but we do understand that it’s human nature,” said Huynh. “I have a son who loves that battle aspect. But he also loves the questing and the platforming aspects.”

Huynh isn’t making the game alone. She’s working with experienced game developers like Michael Lynch, who has worked at EA.

“The goal of the game is to create something where you’re both playing the game and contributing to it at the same time,” said Lynch. “The act of playing the game has a direct impact on yourself, because you’re playing and earning experience and rewards, but you’re also simultaneously creating potential content for others to explore.”

Another difference between MyDream and Minecraft is how it handles servers. You don’t have to set one up in MyDream, you just create a world and up to 20 people can play in it. The world creator can even abandon it and it will still be there for others to play.

The world creator does, however, have a great deal of control over what happens in the world. You can lock things down so people can’t come in and break up what you’ve built. Huynh likens it to a “walled garden,” rather than the chaotic “public beach” experience of Minecraft.

MyDream is also more structured than Minecraft. Instead of simply heading out into the world and doing whatever, players create quests for others to complete with defined objectives.

You can find out more about MyDream here and download the beta.