Within seconds of seeing the Minecraft Sulfur Cube, I knew it was going to be something special. The cheerful little mob was revealed to us as part of the Chaos Cubed game drop that launched in June after two months of testing, and it’s a true game-changer. It allows you to transform it into a wide range of bounceable or sliding forms by feeding it various blocks, and essentially becomes a sentient ball that seems willing and happy to be bashed around the environment. That makes it ideal for building minigames, and Minecraft creators have responded with gleeful enthusiasm.
To help you find some of the best, Mojang has highlighted a selection of the most creative additions to the Minecraft Marketplace that feature the new mob in some key manner. As expected, you’ll find sports-style minigames aplenty, as a natural fit for the ball-like nature of the Sulfur Cube. Many get much more inventive, however, adapting the sandbox game into everything from classic arcade-style Breakout to an explosive first-person shooter.
When it comes to the more obvious designs, it’s hard to beat nine holes of Sulfur Golf. Equipped with a driver and putter, whack the poor cubes around an extensive course that supports up to eight-player competitions. It’s got all the essentials, from bunkers to water hazards, and even a golf cart to get you between shots quickly. If that’s a little too slow-paced for your liking, Sulfur Rush is a Fall Guys-style race through dangerous obstacle courses.
The oldie in me can’t help but smile at Cube Breakers, which shifts perspective to a side-on session of block bashing in the vein of Breakout and Arkanoid. Your innocent Sulfur Cubes ping around to smash all of the other bricks on screen, setting off explosive TNT combos and racking up high scores. It even has a campaign mode that leads to a showdown with the Ender Dragon.
For something completely different, Sulfur Strongholds transforms the traditional Minecraft experience into something more closely resembling an Indiana Jones adventure. Rather than being a standalone minigame, it introduces the eponymous temples across the Sulfur Cave biomes that occur naturally across your world, with four variants of physics puzzles using different elemental Sulfur Cubes.
Blasters (a common term for Minecraft guns in all their various forms) have always been among the most popular Minecraft mods. Naturally, there’s plenty of potential here too. If you’re looking to go guns blazing and cause some real destruction, the Sulfur Blaster add-on lets you power up weaponry with living Energy Cubes. After capturing and infusing Sulfur Cubes for this purpose, you can mix and match their various effects to launch all manner of projectiles, from a lava laser beam to a flock of angry, animated books.
The creation that speaks most deeply to my soul, however, is Trick Shot Tycoon. If you love watching (or trying to recreate) those YouTube videos of people making ‘one in a million’ trick shots such as trying to score with a basketball from a helicopter, or bouncing a coin perfectly into a cup, you’ll immediately be at home here. It’s a little more pricey than some of these other Marketplace offerings, but I love the work that’s gone into the overall production and the numerous ridiculous setups you’re tasked with attempting.
The potential carried in the humble Sulfur Cube was plain to see, but it’s fantastic to actually experience some of those ideas in execution, and I’m sure the concepts people create will only continue to expand over time. I’m very much looking forward to where we’ll be in a year’s time, and I hope Mojang finds other ways to integrate clever creative tools in future updates.