The Barren is not a particularly inviting place. It is, however, a pretty decent survival map with a neat and compact desert theme. As humans throughout history have done, you will begin your journey by clinging to the fertile soils at water’s edge. There you will begin to plant the crops and harvest the animals that have traveled across the desert to drink at the rare spring.
It is only once you’ve established a solid base that you’ll begin to travel away from the safe wetlands and out into the desert wilds. There are treasures to be found in the caves beneath the dunes, but there be monsters and you will face significant dangers in your quest to complete the minecraft survival challenges. In addition to the monsters, there are great rivers of lava traversing the desert gullies. These lava rivers run deep, all the way to bedrock so there is little hope of escaping them if you find yourself caught in their infernal viscosity.
If that wasn’t bad news enough, a spreading corruption is marring the landscape. You might not know what it is at first, but it is too hard to be mined with any normal tool, and in the center of it all lies a mysterious portal to who knows where. All you know is that you’re going to have to one day enter that dark place if you hope to win the map.
This is a good, solid traditional minecraft survival map. I like the size of it, which is huge – although not so full of resources that you feel it’s pretty pointless calling it a survival map. It’s simple without being boring and visually pleasing enough to become something you’ll feel proud to play. There are challenges, but you can abandon them in favor of terraforming the desert, if that’s what you’re in to.