Minecraft for the 5 year old, moving from tablet to PC

September 3, 2014 7:15 AM

My 5 year old son /loves/ playing Minecraft on my grandmother's iPad when she visits. I have a chromebook that I can put linux on. What is the best way to transition him from a touchscreen interface to keyboard+mouse (or bluetooth controller?)? What other differences are there between the touchscreen & computer versions, it has been at least 5 years since I've played Minecraft on my computer, and never on the iPad.
posted by ish__ to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Kids are smart, give them the opportunity to learn and they will surprise you.

I'd say just give him the keyboard/mouse setup, show him WASD, and have him go to town.
posted by LiteS at 9:29 AM on September 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

I would make sure you're set to Creative mode rather than Survival mode so you can do more exploring and building and less getting killed...but yeah, just go explore.
posted by pantarei70 at 12:35 PM on September 3, 2014

The iOS version and the PC version are pretty different (the PC version has many more blocks / monsters / aminals / features / what have you). It's fundamentally still the same game, of course.

I'm not sure how well it would run on a Chromebook. The PC version runs in Java (it's my understanding that the iOS version is a complete rewrite, hence the differences) and is more resource-hungry than you might expect. Give the demo a try on it before you drop the $whatever on a license.

I don't know about the control thing. I personally can't imagine playing the game on anything other than mouse+keyboard.
posted by neckro23 at 11:54 PM on September 3, 2014

Kids will pick stuff up like this in literally seconds. Just show them how and let them go.
posted by empath at 11:55 AM on September 4, 2014