Around mid-2024, my friend Gwen asked our friend group at the time to play Better than Adventure. No one had fun playing it, and ended up making fun of the game for being “Minecraft with nothing to do”. I wish I could say I wasn't guilty of doing that as well, but we all kind of got caught up in the moment. It sucks that I hurt her feelings over something she was excited about. Fast-forward to 2026, my new friend group was talking about loading up a Minecraft server, where Better than Adventure was brought up. I feel bad, I wish I would have given it a shot back then because it's been fun with a group of people. I suppose I wasn't in the right headspace back then.

Better than Adventure is a fork of Beta Minecraft 1.7.3. They joke about it not being a mod pack, and I tend to believe them, since there are no mods installed by default. Everything is a modification of the game's code itself. I'm not sure on all the technical details, but I believe they're attempting to do a full re-write of the source code. I can't say it feels much different from a mod pack, but I can confidently say it feels like a fork.

If you've never played Beta Minecraft, there's no RPG-like elements. No experience, no bosses, no trials, not even abandoned mineshafts. All you get are dungeons, and slightly larger dungeons called labyrinths that have multiple chests and spawners instead of one. It feels nice not having to worry about enchants. Leaving diamonds behind because I knew I'd have a fortune pickaxe eventually never felt great to me. There also isn't a decade of new decoration blocks added, so your options for building are much limited.

If I'm being honest, the lack of options has allowed me to be much more creative. The number of options you have in modern Minecraft left me feeling bad about myself for not being as creative with the unlimited options people have. Here, I can build things I want to build without thinking about all these modern elements that simply wouldn't be possible in BTA. I love modern Minecraft as an RPG, but as a creative sandbox, it's fallen flat for me; it's incredibly overwhelming. I feel obligated to make automated farms in modern Minecraft, as well as making them pretty afterwards. I don't want to feel obligated to do something to have what I know is the most optimal time.

At the end of the day, though, remember, this is a fork; it's not just Beta Minecraft. The BTA team have added features they think Mojang would have added if they went in a different direction. Instead of enchanting, different tools and armour have different effects. New redstone-related blocks were added to keep redstone fun and relevant. Seasons were added to give static biomes new life. New blocks and ways of obtaining resources were added to give blocks and items more purpose. The whole experience is very fun, I recommend giving it a try and playing until you've made a few builds you're happy with.

So, is it worth completing?

No, I don't think you should focus on completing Better than Adventure. If you're going to complete the game by getting all the achievements, I recommend you make some sort of build of each one. I took some time to go after the achievements one-by-one, and it ended up frustrating me more than anything. Additionally, many of the achievements are “do this thing you're already going to do without looking at the achievements”. It's not a big secret that achievements aren't the focus of the game.

I didn't feel satisfied getting any of the achievements in the ways that I did. I put too much effort into getting them without putting effort into the spirit of the game. This isn't a completionist game, so don't play it like one. You can get all the achievements while making something fun out of it. Realistically, it should take you longer than 48 hours to complete the game.

2/38 Achievements that stood out

Most Wanted: Have 10 Zombie Pigmen attacking you at once. This was almost the only real achievement style achievement. I had to plan and strategize how I wanted to go about getting it without dying.

Chained Up: Wear a full set of chainmail armour. It forced me to explore the world. You can only get chainmail armour from labyrinths, so I was going out 10,000 or more blocks to find them.

_{Published 18 January 2026 @ 12:19:34 AM UTC}

End of Game Information

Total Time Played: 48 hours, 6 hours (and counting)