What parents need to know
Do we still need to introduce Minecraft? Mojang’s phenomenon game was released in 2009 first on PC, then on all platforms as it went along. The game and the license were bought by Microsoft for 2.5 billion US dollars in 2014. If the amount seems crazy, it’s because at the time, Minecraft had been sold to 100 million players. Now, it seems that it has reached 400 million copies.
Minecraft is a 3D exploration and survival game where all players can move very freely in a world made up of blocks. Above all, they can create and destroy all the blocks and elements of the world, and shape it in their image.
And that’s the criterion of success, allowing players to let their imagination run wild.
Creating all the shapes, all the buildings, the characters without a time limit, for hours, is a form of art, meditation, sometimes teamwork without equal.
Long compared to a LEGO video game, Minecraft is now present everywhere in pop culture and has the right to its own collection of bricks from the toy giant LEGO. We should also mention the success of the film Minecraft which brought together the prominent Hollywood stars in 2025 and was a box office hit despite mixed reviews.
Minecraft is now codes, a language, a playground for young players sheltered from parents and teachers, a bit like Roblox, and Fortnite. That’s what Microsoft saw when it bought it.
The game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. This does not influence our opinion.
Details
Level of experience required
| Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginners |  |
 |
|
|
|
| Intermediate | |
|
|
|
|
| Experienced | |
|
|
|
|
Evaluation
Players face monsters in many battles with shovels, swords, and pickaxes. Never blood. When monsters lose, they are knocked out.
Players, monsters, and levels come in all shapes and colors. Everything is made up of blocks.
none
The menus have a lot of text and the gameplay much less. Children still need to know how to read to get by.
The player is mostly left to his own devices.
Encourages team play and cooperation.
It is also possible to be ill-intentioned towards other players, to break their constructions, and to hit their characters. This can upset the youngest players.
It will take perseverance to get to the end of the adventure. After that, many challenges with all levels of difficulty will be available. Learning to explore a 3D world takes a little time. The rest is easy.
This Switch 2 version has many menus to monetization options.
Realms, which are realms where players have more control.
A Marketplace pass to get recurring bonuses in exchange for a subscription.
A Marketplace which is a huge online store with many characters, textures, game modes, worlds to buy.
Local game modes
Survival and Creative
Survival is the main mode, you jump, run, strike, mine resources, and craft objects in order to survive the creatures that appear at night. You will have to create tools, shelters, traps to survive each night, until the dawn of the morning.
Creative is the second mode, where you create and do whatever you want in your chosen world. You have unlimited resources, and you can also levitate wherever you want.
The 2 modes are playable from 1 to 4 players in split-screen, or from 2 to 8 players in local wireless mode.
Online Game Modes
The 2 main modes are playable online, and in addition there are a multitude of maps and modes available for free or in exchange for Minecraft coins. The most difficult thing is to find your way through the plethora of menus and possible choices.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
There are 3 editions of this game:
Standard (41 CAD + tax)
Deluxe (55 CAD + tax): With Three expansions: Party Dishes, Rescue Dogs, and A Ton of Blocks; 3 exclusive Character Creator items; and 700 Minecoins*.
Ultimate (69 CAD + tax): Five expansions: Party Dishes, Rescue Dogs, A Ton of Blocks, Decocraft, and Weapons + Tools; five exclusive Character Creator items; and 1,000 Minecoins**.
You can either buy Minecraft standard + expansion or buy them as a bundle.
It all depends on how involved you are in the game.
Our opinion
Speaking of Microsoft, from the moment you want to use an online feature of the game, you will have to log in using an eponymous account. If possible, the account on which you have already played on other platforms in order to keep your progress as much as possible.
Minecraft is hard to grasp. I’ve played the Xbox, PC, Switch 1 and Switch 2 versions now, however the First time User Experience (FTUE) hasn’t improved in the meantime.
The menus are obscure for neophytes, we don’t know what the servers, realms, world correspond to. We search. We come across many bugs. Like the servers that we are offered but that we can’t join. The servers that we tried to join but that appear and then disappear from the World menu.
We remember that we have to do Play -> Create World – Survival or> Creative to start a game. We start, we see that the visibility options of the game are limited to Friends or Friends of Friends on Switch 2. So we play a few minutes solo in the world without understanding the objectives. We get out of this world.
We look at Realm, it’s paid, we switch to Server, we have a suggestion of 10 servers. None of them seem to correspond to the base game of Team Survival. These are highly modified games with many new rules to assimilate. I don’t understand why we can’t choose other servers, look for others.
When you enter a server and have chosen a skin (costume) for your character from Super Mario Mash Up, you get an error message telling you that your skin is not allowed on the servers of other platforms, i.e. Playstation, Xbox, PC, mobile players cannot see your skin, and it is replaced by another skin by default.
It’s a shame, it restricts Mario skins to Switch players only.
The Switch 2 version drastically increases the graphics quality and especially the draw distance.
If you want to better understand how to get by in Minecraft, our colleague has written a guide.
Minecraft is a unique game. It can take hours to start enjoying it. It also takes a lot of imagination and wanting to set your own goals. The best thing to do is to start playing with a guide person, which is where Minecraft becomes most enjoyable. Exploring the game with 2, 3, 4 players, whether on a couch or online, is a whole new experience.
