Hey! I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but since Blox has really taken off recently I’ve had more motivation and reason to get it out sooner!
Many people have been asking about what I intend to do with Blox in the future, or what my vision for the game is. I’ve never really elaborated on the few answers I’ve given, so I’m going to outline what the plan is for Blox going forward.
There will be two major versions of Blox: Classic and Survival.
Classic is the version I’m working on right now; it serves as a small-scale test of some of Blox’s most fundamental features, and lacks most gameplay elements. It’ll take the form of a simple freebuild game where you have freedom to build with unlimited resources in a finite world. When I refer to ‘early access’, ‘pre-release’ and ‘initial release’, I’m referring to this version of the game. I don’t plan to add features to this version after initial release, except for some bug fixes and general maintenance. It’ll be independent of all future versions of the game and remain freely playable.
After that’s released, I will start working on Survival. This will be the main version of Blox, and will be based on much of the work done in Classic. Here you’ll see the gameplay element of Blox introduced and iterated upon, and many aspects of the game will be scaled up. Many new features will be introduced, such as infinite terrain generation, health, finite resources, mining and caving, mobs, combat, day and night cycles, among other things. Most of Survival beyond the early stages is TBD; I’ll be taking plenty of suggestions and doing a lot of game design as we go, though I already have many ideas lined up to try.
Classic and Survival will coexist as two separate games. For this reason, you won’t be able to transfer anything between the two different versions, as they will use entirely disconnected data storage systems. On top of that, the engine structures will likely diverge naturally, complicating any such process anyway.
I do not have plans for a Creative variant of Blox as a separate game. Instead, this may be added to Survival as an optional mode.
Since many people have asked, here’s my current ideas list for Classic. Note that just because a feature won’t be added to Classic, does not mean it won’t be considered for Survival.
Upcoming features for Classic
- Players as entities (by extension, revamped camera and controls, player models and nametags)
- Sneaking
- More graphics options to help performance (render distance, clouds, fancy/fast controls)
- More internal optimisations to help performance
- Block sound effects (step sounds, place sounds, break sounds)
- More music
- VIP servers / solo play (with extra features like world regeneration)
Features under consideration for Classic
- Upside down slabs
- Ladders
- Doors
- Ignitable TNT (VIP servers only)
- Sprinting
- Flying
- Vote to reset world
- Updated text renderer
- Chat scrolling
- Falling sand as entities
- Custom skins
- Texture packs
- Extra layer of dedicated moderation on top of votekick / self moderation
Features not coming to Classic
- Mobs
- Wiring components / pistons
- Infinite worlds / expanded world height
- Finite liquid flow
- Dynamic lighting
- Day and night cycle
- In game saves / dedicated singleplayer (VIP servers work more cleanly and extensibly)
- Permanent / saving public servers (infeasible)
- Mods
As for Survival, not much is set in stone beyond some basics like infinite worlds.
I’m looking to expand upon the best parts of survival from old school Minecraft and emphasise more pure survival mechanics over conquest and exploration mechanics; that means there will be less features like woodland mansions and more focus on a few core gameplay loops. Think of it like an alternate-reality Minecraft if the developers had chosen a different direction for the gameplay.
I’m also looking at hugely rebalancing the entire game. I feel like Minecraft is far too easy nowadays, and features like enchantments and beacons make once-difficult tasks a cakewalk. Needless to say, you’ll be challenged more by Blox, and might ragequit a bit more often, though more peaceful options will likely still be available if that’s your thing 
I definitely do not plan on making a carbon copy of Minecraft. It takes a lot of fun out of the development cycle, there’s a fair few legal issues to navigate, and you could always just play Minecraft instead! That being said, I definitely want to preserve the simplistic, unique feel of Minecraft in Blox, and will take inspiration from Minecraft when considering and designing features for Blox.
I won’t implement features which are uniquely ‘Minecraft-y’ or otherwise iconic, for example creepers and endermen. This doesn’t apply to more general things, like diamonds (even though they are iconic in Minecraft, pretty much every mining game in existence has them, so they’re okay)
Other features which have suitable adaptations may be considered, for example redstone wouldn’t be implemented, but could be generalised as ‘wiring components’. Therefore I could implement those instead if I wanted to. These basic rules help protect against any infringements of rights or similar legal issues, and help to slightly differentiate the game.
I want to avoid implementing too many things, or adding things that serve only one purpose. I prefer reusing existing stuff where appropriate, and being very selective about what features they obtain. This should help keep the game sufficiently simple and avoid feature creep. Ideally, most things should be usable in multiple ways, so you don’t end up with ‘useless junk’ that you can’t do anything with - everything could be used to solve a new or existing problem.
With all that in mind, here are a few ideas I’ve been deliberating over (and a couple of your ideas too):
Possible ideas for Survival
- Deeper underground (64 blocks is far too small nowadays, could even come in ‘layers’ to add more progression)
- Difficulty scaled with height (the deeper you go, the more powerful the mobs - maybe even mobs bound to spawning at lower levels, which could lead to interesting mob farm mechanics)
- Rarer ores (far too easy to get ores at the moment)
- Blocks become harder to break at lower levels (encourages use of higher tier tools rather than sticking with cheap tools)
- Smooth stone for stone tools (makes fuel more important at the start of the game)
- Rebalance gold tools and position it between iron and diamond (more durability but less speed, diamond requires gold to mine instead of iron)
- Beds no longer skip the night (makes surviving the night much more important, puts emphasis on good base defences, beds still set your respawn point)
- Rebalance furnace minecarts and use them in place of powered rails (makes long distance travel more costly, saves gold for use in tools and armour)
- Hardcore mode (not sure how this would be implemented, actually)
This isn’t some final list or anything, and I’ve probably missed a couple good ideas - but this should give you a better idea of what I’m looking to do with the game at least!
If you have any questions or suggestions for other things I should cover, please feel free to send me any questions in our community server, or via DM 
Anyways, I’ll see you guys in Blox 