Minecraft has undeniable appeal to creative gamers, especially those with a love for Legos, but it's also incredibly easy to get burned-out on Minecraft. There's not a lot of depth beyond building, so once you've got an empire constructed, it's often a case of "well, now what?"

Mods have long been in a position to empower gamers to take the direction of the game into their own hands. Minecraft's open modding support has encouraged continual growth and updates to unique aspects of gameplay (like technology-based buildings, adventuring, etc.). CivCraft is the next big mod to improve on Minecraft's depth and, somewhat impressively, completely change its playstyle.

CivCraft is a "Civilization in Minecraft" mod, fusing the RTS/TBS style of play with Minecraft's first-person perspective and resource acquisition core components.

Empires. Tech tree.

In an album published to imgur, CivCraft's creators stated:

"There comes a time in every miner's life, when the stacks of iron, gold, and diamond have lost their meaning. You have all the bread you'll ever need. All the iron you'll ever need. All the diamonds you'll ever need and yet you feel empty. You rule alone [...]

Based off of the popular Civilization series, our mod allows players to experience the building of great and powerful nations from a first person perspective. Start on your journey to glory by founding a civilization using the iron, gold, diamond, and emeralds you mine. Spend those resources to build structures, buy upgrades, found new cities, research technology, and purchase units."

Open beta is targeted to start today (5/17) at 6PM, though the timezone was unspecified. The team's twitter page will update once beta testing has begun.

You can download the mod here.

- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.