Draft written from 2025-08-25 and forward.
I opened my eyes. There was nothing but a flat wall an arms length in front of me. A wall made entirely of dirt. Or, what I thought was dirt, because all I actually saw were pixels in different shades of brown.
I was standing up, but I couldn't move, didn't know how yet.
Wolves growled close by. I shivered. The urge to turn my head clawed at me; I had to see them. I had to know if I was in danger.
Slowly, my head obeyed. First it was only in my mind, an imagined picture of myself looking to my left. That was what caused my head to turn. And there they were, the wolves.
They saw me but, while running up and down the hill, they didn't seem to mind me much. The hill was made out of cubes of pixelated dirt. Everything was made out of cubes, all of the same sized blocks. The spruce trees were square shaped too, block after block placed on top of each other making up the tree trunk with no branches. Even the wolves looked like they were made of smaller pixelated blocks. Why was everything made out of pixels? What is this place?
I continued turning my head, and my body followed. A vast ocean stretched behind me. Suddenly it hit me. The realization. I tried to remember the past. There was blackness, then pixelated dirt, but I couldn’t remember anything from before. No memories existed prior to spawning into this world.
At first, I thought I knew myself. I thought I knew who I was. I didn’t. All I carried was knowledge without an origin. I saw what resembled dirt, and I remembered what dirt was. I saw wolves, and I remembered what wolves are. I saw the ocean, and I remembered what oceans were. Prior to witnessing, nothing came to mind. Beyond knowing facts, there was nothing, no memories.
One of the wolves suddenly darted past my legs and then reappeared directly in front of me. I stumbled backwards into the dirt wall. It had given me a scare for sure, but after it turned around and looked me in the eyes, I felt a sense of calm. The wolf took another quick look, and then, then it ran straight past me again. To be honest, it seemed quite mindless. Just existing without much of a thought. The wolves must have been here long before I got here.
In that stillness, I caught sight of myself, my own blocky body, and the sight terrified me. My arms and legs were stiff, too angular to feel natural, as if I had been carved from wood only using straight angles. For a moment, I feared what I was. Yet the longer I stared, the more the fear softened into recognition.
The edges of my form no longer seemed grotesque, only fitting. Everything around me was just as sharp and rigid; the trees, the leaves, even the wolves. Soon it felt right. If this world was made out of blocks, then so was I, and that meant I belonged here.
The sun appeared, rising through the trees. Indeed it also was square in shape. There was a tree stump by the edge of the water which interested me. A perfect 1 by 1 meter cube, of pure log. I felt as if I could touch it from all the way over here, how is that possible? I saw it in front of me the whole trunk was somehow highlighted. I thought maybe if I got closer to it there's something I can do. I imagined myself taking steps forward, and surely enough, my legs moved till I bump into the tree stump. Though nothing happened, the highlight was still there, just like before.
I decided I was going to reach out my hand to touch the block. I quickly pulled my hand back again. I had reached forward, Nothing had happened. I had given it a tiny punch, for it had felt natural to try, cracks had started to appear from the center on all sides. Why was that?
I considered not trying again and simply walk away instead, but I was too curious. I gave the log a small punch again, the cracks disappeared just as fast as they had appeared. With the continued motion of punching rhythmically, they cracks grew larger, till the cube suddenly vanished. Or rather, it transformed into something smaller. There now was a hologram on the ground, in the shape of the wooden log. Just as abruptly, I was holding it in my hand. I looked down at the slot it was placed in and realize beside it I have eight empty squares at the bottom of my vision. Above it I see 10 hearts and 10 projections of pixelated drumsticks of sorts. Everything is pixelated. That seems to be how this world operates. Nothing but pixels.
I looked up at the sky, maybe looking for where I might have come from. Maybe out of anxiety of what to do next. The square sun was soon right overhead, that was peculiarly fast I thought.
I walked up to a tree standing proudly next to the trunk I had just picked up. I punched the block in front of me. The tree didn't fall. It stayed upright even with a gaping hole in the middle of it. A block of trunk on the ground, a block of "air", and more blocks of tree above that. Marvelous to say the least. Not that I remembered how it should be, but it just felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on what was strange about it.
The number on my hotbar went up for every block I broke. Wait, how did I know it was a hotbar I was seeing, it took me by surprise that I knew, but I didn’t question it. I then tried reaching for the top of the leaves for a holographic projection of a block of wood. Suddenly my legs took a leap. That was something new. Apparently I can jump rather high, a full meter without much effort. Seemingly, that wasn't high enough to reach the item. Instead I punched the leaves it was sitting on to break them and the item came falling down into my inventory. Another word, I didn’t know why I would know it. At the moment I found it more weird that I could reach the top leave blocks to punch them, but I couldn’t reach to pick up the item? The item had to be closer to me to be picked up by my inventory.
Wanting to take a closer look at the six blocks I just had successfully acquired, I found even more inventory slots. It opened up like a holographic projection in front of me and not only were there more space, there was a projection of what I only could believe was myself, that looked odd, I did recognize my appearance, though all my limbs where clumsy blocks moving around. I lead my eyes to look at the mysterious square of four to my right. Maybe that green block next to it had the answers. Reading it made me understand its use, for here were recipes to make planks out of the wood I had collected.
With the planks I made a crafting table and placed it in my hand. I wondered what it would look like on the ground. It appeared in front of me as a workbench and, Interacting with it, the crafting grid expanded from two by two to three by three. I started wondering if that somehow was more useful. Wondering over what I might be able to create in this world?