Product Review

In this eBook, Nicholas teaches the reader how to make three minigames in Minecraft Pi. You are required to know the basics of Minecraft Pi and Python (see his first eBook Minecraft Pi: Getting Started), and how to maneuver around Raspberry Pi. Here is an excerpt of its contents:

Minigame One: Dissipating Arena
In this minigame, you will create an arena where the floor slowly disappears, block by block. The object of the game is to not fall, and last as long as possible. It’s a simple, yet addicting game. You will be able to have scores, too, meaning you can play and try to beat your friends’ scores. In these minigames, you will also learn some really cool concepts, including random numbers and using loops combined with time.sleep() pauses.

Minigame Two: Tetris Doom
The object of this game is to get to the top of the arena by climbing the falling blocks. Be careful! You can also get suffocated by the blocks falling down, so try not to get trapped in a hole! It uses a lot of random numbers, and goes at a much faster pace than the Dissipating Arena. It uses the fact that in Minecraft, when you place sand and nothing is below it, it will fall down. You can try that yourself by placing sand blocks against a pillar, and watch it fall.

Minigame Three: Grab the Gold
In this last minigame, the tutorial is a bit different. I will teach you about what methods and techniques you need to use, but the actual programming is up to you. You will probably need to complete the first two minigames to do this one. In the game, you have to run (or fly) around the arena, trying to destroy a gold block that is constantly moving around every tenth of a second. At the end, it will display how long (in seconds) it took you to destroy the block.

This eBook is made for kids 10-16, but can be for anyone learning Python or the Minecraft Pi API.

Nicholas is a Christian homeschooler who has a talent for programming in most programming languages, including Python, HTML, and Java. He is currently working on a series of eBooks on the Minecraft Pi API.