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Though Markus Persson’s Minecraft owes its success to its melding of avant-garde sandbox replayability with retro graphics, there is one factor that has also contributed to its appeal—its moddability (that is, the ability of the game to be altered by players to suit their aesthetic and/or gameplay preferences).

Over the years, the entertainment industry has spawned hundreds of video games. Time and again, the more successful ones have displayed degrees of moddability. The tweaks that gamers made to the games extended their lifespan. Who could forget the WADs that heightened Romero and Carmack’s Doom? Or Counter-Strike? Or DotA? All of the above are mods; Counter-Strike originally started as a mod for the very first Half-Life while Defense of the Ancients is a Warcraft 3 mod that has garnered a massive following. The WADs (short for “Where’s All the Data?”) are texture, graphics, and sprites packages for the Doom games. Although the heyday of Doom’s mods might already have come and gone it’s worth nothing that they were one of the first progenitors that gave rise to the myriad modding communities that we have nowadays.

Minecraft is no different; members of its fan base have developed hundreds of modifications ranging from Minecraft Servers to Minecraft texture packs. Installed, these give the original game a different aesthetic feel or introduce new gameplay mechanics.

Some of these are:
Default Plus – One of the more popular Minecraft Texture Packs, this contains basically the same Minecraft textures albeit “without the aggravating flaws” as its creator claims. It has been made for people who want improved textures yet do not want to deviate radically from the game’s original aesthetics.

Eldpack – This texture pack also include Minecraft Skins. It overhauls the original game’s terrain with sharper colors. It also reskins the game’s graphical user interface, armor sets, and item icons.

Westerncraft – This is one of the best Minecraft texture packs who want their game to have an old western feel to it.
With a wide range of mods and the game’s own sandbox design, Markus Persson’s game is the very epitome of the word “replayable.”