How much are the two games similar?

Believe it or not, a lot.

In both titles, you are pretty much all alone in the world, and forced to survive and
defend yourself against relentless monsters until the darkness leaves.

Both games find ways to emphasize the lonely feeling - music, ambience, atmosphere,
the world around you and the gameplay itself. But sometimes it's a good loneliness -
even though you're the only person you've seen in the game, when the darkness leaves
everything - from your life to the world around you - seems ok, and you're ok with it,
no matter how scary the night before was.

Yes, there are other people, but in both they are few and far between...in fact, in Minecraft
you may never ever ever see another person, depending on where you go. And in the end,
they really do nothing but be there. It's up to you and you alone to make the game happen.

How the game and story goes depends on your decisions, your actions, where you go,
who and what you interact with, what you obtain and if you can survive.

In both, the game suddenly ramps up at the end bigger than the gameplay before (yes, SH
had boss battles throughout the story, but that final boss always seemed to make the others
pale in comparison - because it meant something more than just survival, unlike the others).

Both have multiple dimensions - and the Nether is similar to SH's Otherworld in ambience and
the lack of timeframe.

In both, the end sequence both explains everything and leaves what you just experienced
absolutely wide open to interpretation.

And there's another thing - Minecraft's ending conversation (don't worry, I won't spoil it for the
four of you out there who haven't gotten to that point yet ;) ) is certainly one heck of a story-twister.
One that makes you think. Makes you wonder. Makes you feel.

Which I guess is how the games are most similar: their ambient atmosphere of how they make you feel.

The only major differences (besides gameplay :p) is that SH was more focused on keeping a closed-in
feeling in a dirty atmosphere, while Minecraft gives you an endlessly massive world to explore that generally has a clean aesthetic...and that SH actually had a storyline.

And then, come to think of it, there's those things in both games that just don't make sense.
Like the screaming wails or ghost trains you hear near or in caves in MC, or the UFO endings in SH.
Seemingly random things that don't add up with the rest of the game, but give atmosphere and layers
of untold backstory to the games.

Both are also filled with urban legends and hidden references, thus again adding more
to the game by simply being there.

Even some of the music is similar, and adds to that peaceful, almost sad, almost happy
all alone in the world ambient feeling:




I'm not saying that Notch took anything from SH at all, he didn't. Minecraft is a totally different game that is completely original and completely awesome (more awesome than SH, actually).

What I'm saying is that the games feel similar in essence to each other in some ways. I dunno, could just
be me - what do you think?