The Best Minecraft Minigame

“Collect as many coins as you can before you get locked in the dungeon.” That’s the goal of a Minecraft minigame which on the surface looks straightforward, but has layers of complexity and heartstopping tension, like Shrek. It’s a game which despite how good it is, you actually can’t play, and really that

Might be the best part about it. Sands of Time is a game made by the Noxcrew for the popular event Minecraft Championship which invokes the idea of exploring an abandoned desert dungeon. Full of challenges and rewards, the game’s theme just makes you want to delve deeper

Into the dungeon and see what you can find. However, though a theme is important, the most important part of Sands of Time is if it’s fun to play, and it most certainly is. The main goal of Sands of Time is a very familiar one – accumulate as many coins as possible,

The same as any game in most minecraft tournaments. The catch is that instead of being awarded your precious points through killing players, surviving, completing a parkour course or replicating a build, the coins in Sands of Time are scattered throughout a procedura-, procedurall-, oh my days that is a word!

Procedurally generated dungeon with many monsters, puzzles, parkour courses, and other challenges standing in your way that test your Minecraft skills. When you want to finish exploring and earn your coins, you head back through the portal in the starting area.

Until you head through this portal, your coins are not counted, but once you go through, you’re done with the game. This is already a pretty unique minecraft minigame, but what really makes Sands of Time the legendary game that it is is the sand timer.

It may seem smart to take your time on every challenge, but it’s not as simple as that because you’re on the clock. In the centre of the dungeon is the sand timer, something that communicates exactly how much time you have left before you’re locked in, resulting in you losing all of your coins.

When it’s maxed out you only have two minutes – so how are you supposed to explore all of the dungeon? The secret is in the name of the game – sand, and even though it’s coarse, rough and irritating, the sand timer is fuelled through blocks of sand.

Everytime you place a block of sand onto the timer, one piece of sand falls into it, and 10 seconds of exploration time is added. This sand is found throughout the dungeon, giving you a reason both to continue exploring

And a reason to come back to the timer, so that you can add more time and your whole team can keep searching the dungeon. There’s not an infinite amount though, and some may be locked behind a particularly difficult challenge, so you have to evaluate carefully whether you have time to grab those extra

Coins you see at the end of a tunnel or whether you need to start running back. That’s without even getting into the tiny complexities of the game such as the sand sacrifices or the vaults – but I’ll get to that soon enough.

The main thing to remember though is that if that sand timer ever hits zero, everyone on your team who is still in the dungeon gets locked in and every coin they have on them is lost, which could wipe out any chances your team had of winning the event.

The game can either be the most incredible comeback or a devastating fall from grace depending on how you play, what strategies you implement, and whether you have the skill to back up your decisions. From that description, you might think that Sands of Time is an overwhelming and complicated

Game, but its complexity is truly its greatest strength. Many Minecraft minigames can quickly become stale. After you’ve played it a few times, you understand the game and how to play it almost optimally. These games have low skill floors, meaning they’re easily accessible, but also have low skill ceilings.

If a game has a low skill ceiling, players can quickly improve to a certain point, but can’t really become any better. There’s only so good that you can get at a game like tic-tac-toe, or to use a common Minecraft minigame as an example, Spleef.

Sands of Time still has a somewhat low skill floor, but its skill ceiling is incredibly high. Strong Sands of Time players are constantly asking themselves questions that a first-time player wouldn’t be. “Should I spend more time looking for one of the vaults down this tunnel, possibly getting

A high number of coins if I can find it and unlock it with a key?” “Is it worth me banking my coins at the Sphinx, reducing the number I’ve earned to 80% of my current total, but guaranteeing that they will be awarded, even if I get locked in the dungeon?”

“Should I spend two sand on this sacrifice, losing twenty seconds of valuable time, but gaining some gold in the process?” And the most commonly asked question of all, “should I stay in the dungeon a wee bit longer…?” These constant judgment calls highlight Sands of Times focus on risk vs. reward, and what

Makes it even more difficult is each player has to make these decisions whilst trying to overcome any parkour or mob based obstacles that might be in their way. Top Sands of Time players, like HBomb94, Illumina and Jojosolos effortlessly work their way through these obstacles whilst calculating their plans for the future.

However, it is worth reiterating that Sands of Time is not a purely individual game. While you are exploring your tunnel, two other players are exploring different areas of the randomly generated dungeon, whilst a fourth player, known as the sandkeeper, is in the

Middle, keeping an eye on the timer and making sure that it never runs out. If your team does not communicate, you’ll never know when you’re low on time, when the sandkeeper needs people to come back with sand, how much sand each player has, or if

Someone has that vault key you’ve been looking for this whole time. Though Sands of Time tests a player’s individual skill, it doesn’t have a single skill-set that will make you the best player. Someone with speedrunning experience may have the mechanical chops to effectively and systematically

Explore the dungeon, but they may not have the ability to clearly communicate and coordinate the team as a sandkeeper. With every player having an opportunity to shine, players feel that they contributed to their team’s success, and viewers of the event are guaranteed to see someone helping

Out their team, no matter who they are watching. On the topic of viewers, we’ve talked about how Sands of Time is a very well designed game, but that doesn’t always translate to a beloved game – so what sets this game apart from other incredibly well-designed games featured across events like Minecraft Championship?

One aspect that makes Sands of Time so thrilling is its status as the finale game. In MCC, games become worth more as the event progresses, and when the tension and potential of coin output is at its highest during the final game, Sands of Time is either the most

Stressful or the most satisfying experience, depending on what team you’re watching. Other games might have a limit on how well you can do, but Sands of Time’s high skill ceiling and huge dungeon boost the score of a top team incredibly high.

The game’s ability to shake up the standings means that when Sands of Time comes up as a finale, all bets on the winner are off. Even if the team you’re watching is far behind, it’s always possible for them to make up the difference if they do incredible, and someone else falls just short.

Though Sands of Time features the highest of highs, it also has the lowest of lows of any game, making it incredibly tense to watch. It features moments where risk pays off… moments where risks lead to defeat… where players escape just in time… or come so close, yet don’t make it…

These moments could come at any time in the game, making the viewing, and gameplay experience for the game one of continual stress and tension in the best possible way. You never know what’s going to happen, making those moments of success even better.

This tension is amplified by one final key element of Sands of Time. When you play most competitive games, you know how the other teams are doing compared to you. In Sands of Time however, the scores of every other team are only revealed when you leave the dungeon.

While you’re in there, you don’t know how well you’re doing, and you cannot know if you’ve done enough to win. This knowledge deficit leaves you in the dark as to how well you’re truly doing, and the tension only drops when everyone leaves the dungeon, and you finally know if you pulled

The comeback off or not. All of these elements, the tension, the high and low moments, its brilliance as a finale game, combine to create a viewing experience like no other. Though many other games may have some of these elements, Sands of Time is the only one which combines it all.

We mentioned at the beginning of this video that the brilliance of this game comes from the fact that you can’t play it, and you might still be unsure why that is. Immediately, the idea that a game being played less makes it better doesn’t make much sense.

Sands of Time is only played once a month, whilst any other minecraft minigame can be played whenever you wish. But, what does this result in? Firstly, you have a slowly changing meta, where in order to try and experiment with a new strategy, you need to risk it and try it in that moment.

There’s no “try again” button if you fail, amplifying the tension once more. And, perhaps more importantly, how rarely it’s played elevates Sands of Time to more than just a game, but a monthly experience that you look forward to.

If it were played more, if you could log onto a server and play it right now, it wouldn’t have the charm and feeling of uniqueness that it has. If it were something that could be restarted, and played a second time, those tense moments and brilliant victories wouldn’t be quite as impactful.

And so when you sit down, and find that MCC has yet another Sands of Time finale this event, you don’t think about how you’re not the one playing it – you’re just appreciating what you have.