Hole In The Dirt Minecraft Survival Map
With the trend towards simplicity being rewarded heavily in minecraft maps, it was only a matter of time before someone dug a hole in the ground and uploaded it as a survival map – and only a little longer matter of time before I downloaded it and reviewed it. Because self loathing is the best kind of loathing.
The creator of the map makes no bones about its simplicity, even the storyline that accompanies the map is imbued with a dry humor. As usual, it says, you wake up alone and in the dark, yadda yadda. You wonder what's going on, then you remember that you downloaded Hole Survival and you start chipping away at the rocks with your fists because that makes the challenges that much more challenging.
And yes, there are challenges. Every survival map comes with challenges these days, mostly because we all know that a torch and a sword are pretty much all you need to survive in minecraft, so in order to stave off a growing sense of ennui, we ask map creators to tell us other things we should do in order to reward ourselves with a sense of achievement.
The challenges are pretty simple: Make a house, make a mob grinder, make a snow golem, overthrow the capitalist system. One of those might not actually be written on the challenge board, but I think it's strongly implied.
The greatest challenge I personally experienced in this map was downloading WinRAR to deal with the .rar format of the file. Why zip when you can make people jump through hoops for no apparent reason, that's what I always say. The second challenge I faced was in seeing anything. The hole is a very dark hole at the outset and there's just one torch you have to move from place to place. I actually like that, it's a nice touch.
All in all, this is actually quite a nice little survival map. There are secrets to uncover, which we all enjoy, and there are basic challenges for those who like that sort of thing. Is it hard? Well, it does have a 'starter' chest, so not particularly, but then again, who needs hard? I want just enough challenge in my life to keep me from thinking about the meaninglessness of it all. And if you do think about the meaninglessness of it all, well then you've failed one of the top level challenges of the map – enjoying life.
