Among the many reasons why Minecraft is still so popular these days is its variety of game modes. Despite being primarily a survival sandbox game, the game offers so much more for players to do, and a multitude of different goals and objectives they can set for themselves. It's that freedom in particular that players always love coming back to.
Depending on each player's preferences, they'll go for a different game mode or gameplay experience. However, not all of them have exactly the same features, which is why knowing what players are getting themselves into is key before starting a new world. Here are a few things to know about game modes, as well as how many of them there are in the first place.
10 Block Reach
Block reach means how far the player can stand in order to be able to touch or interact with a specific block. Standing too far will make a block unavailable or out of reach, so knowing the limit is a game-changer for any player.
Most game modes have a block reach of 5 blocks. However, creative mode is different in that regard, with a block reach of 6 blocks. This is no doubt in place to make the life of builders easier.
9 Hardcore Is Exclusive
Every Minecraft world, aside from creative, can be given a difficulty rating: Peaceful, Easy, Normal, Hard. However, for players wanting even more out of the game, there's still one more level: Hardcore. Hardcore is actually its own game mode, with Hard difficulty and with specific rules. It's probably the most challenging way to play the game.
In Hardcore, the player's death marks the end of the world. They can no longer respawn after they've died. This mode is actually only available in Java Edition for now.
8 Dying In Creative Mode
Creative mode completely removes any survival aspect from the game, and turns Minecraft fully into a sandbox building game. Anything and everything in the world can be interacted with easily, and mobs will tend to ignore the player.
However, the player can still die in creative, if they jump into the void and don't actually fly up to save themselves.
7 Breaking Blocks In Adventure
Adventure mode is one of the unique modes that don't usually do well when played with normal Minecraft maps. The reason for that is the inability of players to break blocks in Adventure mode, which makes crafting and harvesting materials impossible.
This rule exists because the mode is meant to be played on Adventure maps, which have been built and designed by the community. However, there's a challenge of its own to actually play the regular survival mode of Minecraft with Adventure rules, which forces players to get creative with survival without breaking any blocks.
6 Turning Cheats On
Everyone has most likely been in this position at least once in their Minecraft career. They've started a world and turned the cheats off, only to realize that they do indeed want to use cheats after all or maybe change the game mode completely.
The creator of the world can cheat the system by clicking on "Open to LAN" in the menu of the game, which allows them to not only turn on cheats but also redefine the game mode if they so please.
5 Spectator Mode
A game mode that never really gets talked about is the spectator mode, which is basically the role of a passive observer. It doesn't make much sense to use this game mode while alone in survival, unless the player is curious about world generation and just wants to explore freely.
This game mode lets players go through walls and see everything. They can also spectate from third or first-person view if there are other players in the world, making it great for any administrators to spy on members of their servers.
4 Multiplayer
The great thing about Minecraft is that it's a game that's meant to be shared. Although playing it alone can be rewarding, some of the best experiences usually come with playing it with friends.
Multiplayer is available for all game modes, from survival, to creative to even hardcore worlds. If survival servers seem like a boring idea, there are also tons of creative building-only servers where players can hone their design skills.
3 Demo Mode
There's still one more game mode that hasn't been talked about, which is a narrow, niche game mode only available to those who are looking to try the game out before actually purchasing it. This is the Minecraft demo mode.
The demo mode is interesting because it only features survival gameplay and allows the player to play for roughly five in-game days nonstop. After that, they'll need to purchase the full version to get access to creative and hardcore, as well as multiplayer features.
2 Possible Game Modes
Developers are constantly trying to bring something new and fresh to the game, and discussion about potential game modes has happened in the past. Notch in particular once expressed early on in the development of Minecraft the idea of a capture-the-flag type of game mode, which never saw the light of day.
Notch has also joked in the past about including a special hardcore game mode, in which players lose their Minecraft game license if they die.
1 All The Gamemodes
All in all, Minecraft has 5 game modes. Technically, only 4 of those are considered actual game modes, since spectator mode isn't exactly a way to actively play the game, but rather passively observe others.
This includes survival, creative, hardcore, and adventure, which are primarily available in the main menu when first creating a world.