I made s'mores from cats and dogs in Lucid Blocks, a version of Minecraft held together by dream logic

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:04:26 +0000

I was five minutes into the excavation of my very first, procedurally generated Lucid Blocks map when I struck Dogblock, Catblock and S'more, in that order. I didn't excavate them, actually. I conjured them by feeding gobbets of occult, dreamlike material into the "Apotheosis" magic circle that is possibly this sort-of-survival game's crafting screen, and possibly a gateway to some astral sphere.

The impossible alchemy of Lucid Blocks is a reminder that 99% of videogame crafting is boring

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

There is a tiny wild sun trapped inside my crystal tower. I hear its garbled voice and catch the yellow of its fire through the blinding white blocks of the summit. The tower itself is so bright on the outside you can barely identify objects placed on it, but I have smashed the crust and dug a network of passages, and it’s shadier within. A realm of shining fog, slick as tooth enamel, with fissured, fugitive reflections that call to mind the beautiful quartz spacecraft in Noctis.

The relative gloom inside the tower implies that the structure’s external radiance is also a reflection. It appears to be caught in the glare of some celestial body, but if such a body exists, it emits radiation invisible to the naked eye, discernable only from its impact on other bodies. The skies of Lucid Blocks are dark and cloudy even by day, inasmuch as ‘day’ means anything in the game. There is one major astral feature, a hazy torus that neither rises nor sets, luminous enough to orient by when exploring the game's procedurally generated landscapes, but not enough to actually light your steps after dark. The only real sun here is the one below. The one I crafted. It slurs and shouts, nosing the walls of its prison.

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I made s'mores from cats and dogs in Lucid Blocks, a version of Minecraft held together by dream logic

The impossible alchemy of Lucid Blocks is a reminder that 99% of videogame crafting is boring