The players go on a journey

Minecraft is a perennial favourite of mine. I come back to it every year or so, play it for a month straight, and then put it down again. Trying to develop a game around it is an interesting challenge.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the Rune combat RPG as I read your comment. In it, the participating players are in a round-robin style GM/referee role, where they have an opportunity to select the type and strength of challenge that all players will face. The players all do as best they can in the short scenario: combat, exploration, navigating obstacles, mystical/magical challenges, visiting Hell, etc. Players earn XP for their level of success during the challenge.

I think the same kind of system could be streamlined to develop a Minecraft game. There would be two phases of a turn: Challenge and Rest.

CHALLENGE PHASE
One player selects one or more Challenge Cards from their hand and reveals it to all players. This reveals nearby terrain as well as some sort of encounter. This could be anything from fighting a Skeleton, finding a Gold vein, sealing up a Lava Flow, and so on. The Challenge represents a concrete physical action where players interact with the world.

Challenge cards permit players to earn XP and maybe a few random drops (like skeletons drop a Bone and a Feather, for example). Depending on a player's equipment, they could collect resources featured in the terrain (like if you have a Pail, you could collect a Bucket of Lava from the Lava Flow).

REST PHASE
After a Challenge is resolved, it's time to Rest. This is when players Craft something with the resources they've collected. They can also opt to harvest more resources from the nearby terrain instead. Depending on the equipment the player has, they could be more effective: a Wooden Pick allows players to collect less Stone than a Stone or Iron Pick, for example.

After the Rest phase is done, the next player chooses the next Challenge. The process repeats until one or more players earns X number of Victory Points or XP. You can sandbag leaders with this system too: develop tiers of accomplishment that award VP. If they've already created an Iron Tool, they won't receive VP for another one created. They need to create X# of Gold Blocks instead. Something like that.

The thing I like about the Rune RPG system is that even if a player is defeated in a Challenge, they can still participate as a Challenge-maker. This Journey game could also feature that, as well as allowing the Challenge-maker to earn VP by presenting a tough challenge that claims the life/resources of other players.

EQUIPMENT
For the sake of streamlining the game, I'd likely ignore the notions of equipment deterioration, instead opting to amplify the effectiveness of certain actions during certain Challenge Cards or Rest actions. For example, maybe someone wants to focus on crafting Armour and a good Sword, meanwhile another player has agriculture Challenge cards in their hand, so they spend time harvesting plants. Still others could occupy their time with Magic research.

The variety of Challenge cards would allow for several different paths to victory, while the round-robin style of Challenge selection prevents the game from stalemating or dragging on forever.

This is just a start (and dashed off before I start my day job!), but it certainly is a direction to go for. It certainly isn't the ONLY direction, either.

Go for it. :)

I'd be concerned about sprawl and micromanagement with some of the ideas you mention. Your description makes me think of Caverna for some reason (which I could only personally handle playing once). That seems to have a very different feel to me than Minecraft.

If you're looking for something just as in-depth, then keep on rolling. If you want something a little more manageable in an hour or so, then I recommend you rein in a few of those concepts.

I'll mention that I've been baking a Minecraft- esque game for a few years. I enjoy Minecraft, but my son is nuts for it. My game is pretty lean and focuses on like the first hour or so in game which is the part I like a lot. It has gathering, crafting and a night phase when it gets dangerous and is a co-op.

For your experience, I think Tokaido has a good sense, but you need random encounters.

What if it is more of a rondel like Great Western Trail and you get more vp and opportunities by staying in the lead? And play cards onto the trail. Or completely deck driven and you spend time units to do things, but if you only move you can cash all your time to vp. And you expose new cards, maybe on a conveyor as you move. But the tortoise has ways to score by hitting the encounters. Less "take that" and more euro this way.

p.s. On play time, you can get a lot of game in in an hour if the decision set is tight. Just played two player Marco Polo in like 45 minutes, but feels very rich.