For over 10 years, Minecraft has been gradually consolidating its power as a top dog of both voxel-based gameplay and the survivalcraft genre itself. And as its player base continues to grow, with Mojang developing more and more spin-offs for mobile, a thirst for more Minecraft-like games continues to grow among the mobile gaming community.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to play Minecraft but aren’t ready to fork up the cash; Maybe you love Minecraft but want to stretch your legs a little and see what else the genre has to offer.
Well, luckily for you, we’ve sifted through the deluge of shabby Minecraft clones and rounded up what we think are some of the better free to play games like Minecraft for mobile, available right now.
Best Free Minecraft Alternatives in 2020
Check out these amazing titles that give you Minecraft-like gameplay without making a dent in your wallet.
Mini World Block Art
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
Mini World Block Art is a surprisingly robust take on the survivalcraft genre that mobile gamers should be interested in. The graphics are nicely polished, well above the average voxel-based mobile game, and with a wide variety of modes for online play it comes as no surprise that it sports a bustling, highly dedicated player base. You won’t find yourself endless roaming a procedurally generated world, all too aware of the creeping sense of loneliness and existential dread in the back of your mind.
Mini World Block Art is easy on the eyes and always has a lot of online action running. You can opt for the standard Minecraft-like survival modes and creative modes, as well as online PvP, Parkour, Puzzles, Circuit Maps, and anything and everything else the massive community comes up with. There’s also the added bonus of free world-hosting.
Download Mini World Block Art: Android | iOS
Block Craft 3D
Developer: Fun Games For Free
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
Block Craft 3D is a no-frills Minecraft clone that removes the survival side of the survivalcraft genre and leaves just the craft. A straightforward, rolling voxel-hills sandbox, the default world has no enemy mobs and, from what we could tell, only one biome. What lands it on this list is the control setup which is considerably smoother than most of the other hastily fabricated Minecraft clones.
Gamers looking for free Minecraft should certainly look elsewhere; the placid, mob-free world will quickly bore them. Those however who love the crafting and construction side of Minecraft but loathe the stress of combat will find Block Craft 3D a pleasantly calm outlet for their creativity.
Download Block Craft 3D: Android | iOS
Block Fortress: Empires
Developer: Foursaken Media
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
Block Fortress: Empires is a smooth, action-packed pixel shooter that gives players fast-paced combat with fun online co-op modes. Players start by assaulting a variety of rectangular, voxel-based planets to lay claim to and set up a fully customizable personal base. The planets come in familiar varieties like tundra, desert, forest, along with a few more interesting variants like a toxic, thunderous Wasteland.
Once you’ve established your own base and fortified your personal world with all manner of explosive and shockingly impolite defenses, you can invite other players to take a crack at invasion — and assault their worlds in turn, of course. All in all, Block Fortress: Empires is a fun, explosive take on the pixel shooter genre that really kicks the Minecraft aesthetic up a notch with insane graphics and impressive character customization.
Download Block Fortress: Empires: Android | iOS
LastCraft Survival
Developer: Pixel Gun 3D
Platform: Android
Price: Free
LastCraft Survival is a post-apocalyptic pixel shooter/crafting game that plays like a mashup of Minecraft and the Borderlands franchise. And it’s pretty cool. You have an explorable, open-world desert full of zombies and ramshackle buildings where you forage for supplies and lay waste to the undead while crafting whatever equipment you need.
There are story missions, multiple game modes like Survival and Team Deathmatch, and, of course, its vast sandbox desert to run around in, exploring, shooting, building. All in all, it’s a fresh take on survivalcraft and pixel shooters that blends good elements of both franchises, which goes a long way towards forgiving its surprisingly long loading times.
Download LastCraft Survival: Android
Craft Warriors
Developer: Translimit, Inc
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
Essentially Minecraft meets Warcraft, Craft Warriors is an actually good strategy-game that borrows the pixelated voxel aesthetic and spreads it across a well-made MMORTS with some super cool player-made content. Like your usual RTS, you’ll be constructing a city and assaulting those of rival players, pillaging them for precious resources while accruing a deck of collectible units.
What really stands out about Craft Warriors is not only the overall production quality and pleasing visuals but the fact that unlike many free-to-play RTS games, it doesn’t hound you to pull out your wallet right from the get-go. Probably its coolest feature is the ability for players to upload custom-made unit designs and subscribe to other cool community creations that you can skin over the game’s default models. Overall, Craft Warriors is a fun and unexpected blend of two otherwise disparate genres.
Download Craft Warriors: Android | iOS
PlanetCraft
Developer: Playlabs, LLC
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
PlanetCraft is, quite unabashedly, just an unofficial MMO version of Minecraft; While not exactly original, it has successfully carved out a niche of its own for the mobile gaming community at large. Visually, PlanetCraft does nothing, literally nothing, to differentiate itself from Mojang’s all-too-recognizable heavyweight and gameplay-wise it is nearly identical.
It has online/offline Creative Mode, Single Player Survival, Rentable Creative Mode that lets you put your chunks up on the market, and its best feature: Global Survival Multiplayer — the only way it truly departs from Minecraft. Global Survival Multiplayer maintains the whole server in the same continuous world with open-world PvP and the usual nighttime terrors of Minecraft, which is actually pretty cool.
In PlanetCraft, you worry less about zombies and spiders and more about enemy players. For fans of open-world survival PvP, Planet Craft takes what you like about games like Ark: Survival Evolved — the chance to murder other players for their loot — and combines it with what is almost exactly Minecraft.
Download PlanetCraft: Android | iOS
Epic Mine
Developer: Black Temple
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
Epic Mine borrows the look and feel of Minecraft, complete with the two dimensional pickaxe, and applies it to an exceedingly simple concept perfect for fans of idle games. The premise is simple: use your pickaxe to mine and collect resources, spend said resources on upgrading your village, use the village to help you upgrade your pickaxe to help you mine, collect resources… you see where this is going.
The crazy part? Everything takes place with one finger. One. Indeed, Epic Mine does not push the boundaries of game mechanics, and gamers on the lookout for something to raise their heart-rate should search elsewhere; Epic Mine does its best to deliver a simple, straightforward zen-like experience with the touch of a single button.
Download Epic Mine: Android | iOS
Block Story
Developer: Mindblocks
Platform: iOS/Android
Price: Free
With all the trappings of your typical voxel-based survivalcraft with the bonus of higher-poly sword-and-sorcery sprites, Block Story merges Minecraft with a straight-up fantasy RPG for a slightly bizarre but not unpleasant spin on the free Minecraft clone. While the game is a little rough around the edges, Block Story manages to have a distinct character of its own and certainly smoothens out once you get the hang of its somewhat wonky controls.
The game’s art style is… unique. Unique in that it looks like a bunch of PS2 fantasy NPC’s got lost in a half-finished 2009 Minecraft world — one part undeniably cool, one part unintentionally hilarious. And while it is an obtuse cookie-cutter mix of different tropes, Block Story does its best to paint a picture of a voxel-based desert fantasy that has you exterminating the usual nighttime creepy crawlies and foraging for resources.
Some will enjoy it, more discerning gamers may be frustrated by it, but Block Story is definitely worth a try for serious fans of either genre.
Download Block Story: Android | iOS
And there you have it!
Hopefully, our list helps guide you through the shambling, walking-dead style mob of shameless Minecraft rip-offs towards something a little fun, and a little more unique than the rest. Did we miss one of your favorite games? Should Mojang use this as a hit-list to sweep the field of rival claimants to the voxel throne? Let us know!
