It is 10 years since Flowerchild disagreed with Mojang on the direction of Minecraft, spawning what became, in our opinion, the best Minecraft total conversion mod yet made. Better than Wolves was a dig at the creators of Minecraft about the time that they spent programming wolves into the game which would have been better spent doing something, anything, else. Better than Wolves (BTW) showed us what was better than wolves, including, ironically enough, improved wolves!
What is Better than Wolves
BTW was frozen at Minecraft version 1.5.2. This was one controversial step of many for Flowerchild, although his reasoning, as always, was very logical. As BTW progressed Flowerchild rewrote more and more of the game’s base code, fixing bugs and making improvements to graphics, chunk loading, mob pathing, and much more. This was in addition to the feature additions and changes which were at the heart of the mod. Every time Mojang brought out a new version of Minecraft it was necessary to work through all the changes and either fix them again, or remove them. This wasn’t efficient in time, and so the mod became a total conversion of Minecraft, fixed at that version.
Flowerchild’s cutting remarks on the various forums earned him a reputation as an independent programmer who wouldn’t take on board any views other than his own. He was famous for banning anybody on his forum who questioned his decisions or tried to make suggestions for improvements. While this may have seemed absurd to many, particularly those that opposed his views, it helped to create one man’s perfect vision of what Minecraft should have been.
What makes Better than Wolves so good?
Better than Wolves is a superb game. Every feature within it was designed firstly to be of value to the game, and only a very distant second to be of a cute or visual appeal (like wolves!). Nothing was added that wasn’t essential in progressing through the tech tree, unlike vanilla Minecraft which is now filled with flora and fauna, not to mention stones and landscapes, which add nothing to the game except a visual buzz for the player. This is the one major difference between Flowerchild and Mojang, and it is this which has spoiled every other mod for me. While it is great to have a stunning visual world to play in, there must be the mechanics which go alongside that which keep you entertained.
The game was designed to be difficult. As in, if you don’t die at least a dozen times before surviving your first night, you’ve cheated! Survival is one of the key aims, and in the early game you are challenged to find materials, food, light, and safety before nightfall. If you haven’t managed all of this (and it is far more difficult than vanilla MC) then you will fight a losing battle against the night-time mobs. Hunger is an acute need, and you soon learn to be conservative in your physical exertions. Running, jumping, swimming, all drain your hunger bar rapidly. If you let it drop too far then you start to lose abilities such as healing, running, jumping, even walking and sight. Without a sustainable source of food you will not survive. This is represented best by the name of the various mechanics: Hardcore Bedding (beds no longer work to set your spawn), Hardcore Movement (slow walking on soft surfaces, fast walking etc. on paths), Hardcore Ores (mining nuggets instead of ingots), Hardcore Stratification (harder layers in the ground need better tools each time). There are dozens of these mechanics, all of which have the single task of making this game match the vision of the designer.
The focus on survival and food, coupled with a much, much, much slower progression through the ages, results in what for me is one of the greatest features of the game. Materials are sparse (or at least the ability to gather them), and waste is actually wasteful, so you see your home grow in stages to accommodate the new requirements over time. My bases always had an evolutionary feel about them. If you had built a stone wall to protect against spiders and other creatures then you kept within that wall – this results in an extra storey or two. If you build a windmill somewhere then you need to work with that design to build power conduits to your next mechanism. Sometimes (not often) you find that an earlier feature is no longer needed, and then you re-purpose that space for something more appropriate. You never just walk away from a developed base without a good reason.
One of the best features of Flowerchild’s development of his game was his desire for the players to discover his creation for themselves. The changelogs are full of tantalising features such as “Added a couple of additional factors to not worry about” which introduced massive game-changing mechanics which wreaked havoc with people’s worlds if they didn’t heed the warnings. But these were introduced, and the proper warnings were made, and then the community investigated and posted their findings. Commonly these results were not the entire mechanic, but assisted others in working out the full ramifications.
There are no vast plains teeming with wildlife in this mod. That wouldn’t make sense – either they would be pointless creatures which added no gameplay, or they would be far too abundant to make the game challenging. The mobs which were added were far deadlier and terrifying than that – for example, the Beast, who’s blood-curdling growls would could be heard on occasion. The first time you heard that sound you would seriously need a change of underwear.
At the start of the game you may be fooled into thinking that there are plenty of animals to chase down and kill. Unfortunately, in the first day you’re not strong enough to do this, and by the end of the first night the mobs have hunted them all down already. The only option is to wander onwards in search of the basic materials and food. This gives the player a nomadic experience for quite a while, until the discovery of pumpkins, or a village with potatoes or carrots is found. At this stage it is possible to settle in one spot and become a farmer of vegetables to survive. It isn’t until much later that animals can be domesticated.
Another feature which supports exploration is the re-spawn mechanic. Using some sort of algorithm you will randomly re-spawn within an ever-increasing circle each time you die. This has real implications to the player! First of all, where are you? There is no ‘F3’ GPS to find your location. You have no tools again – back to square one on the tech tree. You are once again short of food. And finally, you have only a few minutes if you want to recover those hard-won weapons and armour which you have just dropped! All of this does two things – firstly it makes dying a real hardship. I know! Who’d have thought that death would be such a drag? Secondly, it promotes the building of a network of roads, beacons, or breadcrumbs around the landscape, as well as a series of mini-bases from which you can collect food and tools before going on to find your death location. Another fantastically well-thought-out game mechanic from Flowerchild, which really gives this game substance.
That’s really the beauty of Better than Wolves – every game mechanic is so well thought out and so well implemented that I much prefer it over any more up to date Minecraft mod, and any other game out there at the moment. I’ve been looking for years for anything to replace BTW, as a multiplayer survival sim, and there is very little that comes close. Vanilla Minecraft is not even close to the top of the list – although we have tried a number of mods that come recommended, such as Terrafirmacraft, Real Life Craft, Better with Mods, and Immersive Engineering. None of these have anywhere near the amount of polished content that BTW has. The latest two we have tried are Raft, which is a fun, if narrow, game, and Valheim, which is a lovely game with tonnes of content already. Both of these are in Early Access and will hopefully be getting some updates soon.
Conclusion
The reason for this post? As I said earlier, it has been over ten years since Flowerchild began his journey, and on the anniversary of its conception on the 9th April 2021, Flowerchild said his farewell and left the mod in the hands of his fanbase. I don’t think that he had completely finished the game to his satisfaction, but that was probably a task which was never going to be achieved. What he left behind was a masterpiece, with just a little shading here and a touch-up there to make it complete. It is the greatest mod ever to grace Minecraft’s source code, and the way in which it was developed could mean that it’s like will possibly never be seen again. Flowerchild, thank you!