When I first started playing Minecraft a few months back, I played with a rule: if I die, I have to delete the entire world. This is the third entry in the diary I kept of that experiment - the first is here .

Day 2

Day 2

Day 4 >

Day 4 >

World 2, Deaths 1

The growl, I decide after wildly swinging my view five or six full revolutions around my tiny cave, came from outside. I brick up the window to the outside.

The sound continues through most of the night: a disgusting, gurgling groan, terrifyingly close. When it does stop, I knock out a block to peer at the outside world, see that it's still dark, and put it back.

When dawn finally does break, I climb out of my awkward hole and look around. There's something different about this mountain today. I don't know if it's the grass, the earth, the rocks, the walking pillars of flame - hm, were there walking pillars of flame yesterday?

The horrors I've been hiding from all night are still here, and they're on fire. This is hilarious. I skip through the morning inferno merrily, quickly reaching the interesting peak I was heading for, then moving on down into a grassy valley.

Then I look behind me. There's a green thing, with no arms and a permanent D: expression, following me.

He's not on fire. I run.

When I feel like I've got enough of a lead to risk another glance, there's three of them. I start throwing down blocks and jumping over them to try and hinder their pursuit, but they wiggle round them or hop over and they're back on my tail in no time.

This might be serious.

Up ahead, there's a low ridge we'll have to hop up. It's my chance. It's only one block high, but I have three blocks of earth in-hand. I jump the one-block ridge, spin round, and slap down all three earth blocks in a diagonal line. The barrier's only one metre high on my side, but twice as tall for the D-Colons. Much as they mosh, they can't get up - nor do they have the wit to notice they could easily get around my impromptu wall if they moved two blocks to the left or right. I now have three dancing, harmless pets.

In landscape gardening - bear with me here - this is called a ha-ha. A drop that acts like a wall in one direction, but is almost invisible to the fops and dandies sipping tea on their manicured lawn above. I mention this in part to explain why I thought it would be a good idea to stand on top of it, laughing at the creatures and punching them in the face.

I heard the hiss, I just didn't know what it meant. I thought they were just angry, and they probably were. But when the first one detonated, the rest followed, and the blast killed me instantly.

Well, that clears up the mystery of World 1.

Next: I find a world I very much hope I don't have to delete .