Minecraft as we all know is one of the most popular games this year, and it should be headed to the iPhone before the end of the year. What do you do until then?

Eden – World Builder ($0.99)

“Explore a vast pristine world of infinite possibility. Build your own personal Eden. Eden brings the creative block building genre, pioneered by games like Minecraft, Infiniminer, and Blockland, to the touch screen.”

Presentation

It’s kind of hard to judge Eden on graphics, since they’re not supposed to be a strong point. At the time of the review, the game doesn’t look very good on retina devices. Adding on top of that, the latest update to the game makes it universal, and is supposed to have “HD iPad support”, but the game still doesn’t look very good on it.

Additionally, as you move throughout the world, it’ll stop every so often to load the rest of the world, whether you be on an iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Overall, although the game maintains the Minecraft look and feel, it could use some work.

Controls

Controls were the biggest problem I could foresee going into this game. To my surprise, they work pretty well. You’ll have a joystick on the left, and buttons on the right. I’m not going to lie, they stick out, badly. That being said, they get the job done.

You control it like you would control any other game, use the joystick for movement and swiping to control the view. As for what to do, you have the buttons, which are pretty straightforward. Fire burns things, paint palette lets you change the color of things, etc.

Once you select what material you want to use, you can simply tap to put the block there, or tap and hold to see a see-thru preview of it. The control scheme may not be the best looking one out there, but it gets the job done.

Gameplay

Eden, as mentioned above, was obviously Minecraft inspired. And up to a certain point, can be thought of as Minecraft Lite, but not quite. Basically, if you get the building portion of Minecraft and strip everything else out, this is what you would get.

You’re not going to be hiding from zombies or spiders in Eden, or worrying about your health: your job is to build, and that is all. At first the game feels a bit weird to play on a touchscreen, after a while though you get more used to it.

What blocks do you have at your disposal? Pretty much all the basics: wood, rock, TNT, stairs, etc. If there’s one thing I was wishing I wish was added is something that was just recently introduced in Minecraft: flying. It’s a lot more effective when you’re strictly building than going around on foot.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a quick Minecraft fix, or can’t wait for the official Minecraft iOS port, this should keep you entertained for the time being. You can either create your own world, and share it with the world, or you can even browse through worlds uploaded by other users and check those out (some are quite impressive). I’d recommend picking it up if you want a quick fix.