Blocky Planet: What If Minecraft Worlds Were Spherical?
by Jettelly
Published |
What if Minecraft ditched flat worlds and let you build on round, mini-Earth–style planets? That’s exactly what one indie developer set out to explore with Blocky Planet, a Unity tech demo that transforms classic voxels into a fully destructible sphere.
Inspired by an old prototype from Jordan Peck, the project tackles the surprisingly tough problem of mapping blocks onto a sphere without everything turning into distorted chaos.
What Is Blocky Planet?
Blocky Planet is a tech demo built in Unity 6 with C#. The project generates spherical planets made up of more than 20 different block types, all placeable and destructible in real time. Think Minecraft-style gameplay, but wrapped around a globe where gravity and geometry change the experience.
The latest build is free to try on Itch.io, with both a Windows version and a playable web build (some jankiness included).
The latest build is free to try on Itch.io, with both a Windows version and a playable web build (some jankiness included).
The Challenges of Making Minecraft Spherical
Building a blocky sphere sounds easy in theory: just filter blocks inside a radius and call it a day. But in practice, it introduces serious challenges:
- Gravity misalignment: blocks do not line up with the surface, making building upward or walking feel weird.
- Geometric distortion: mapping a square grid onto a sphere squishes blocks at the edges.
To fix this, the developer turned to the quad sphere technique: divide the planet into six cube-like faces, map square grids onto each face, then project them outward to form the sphere.
Even then, extra adjustments were needed to minimize distortion and keep the blocks looking like actual cubes instead of stretched rectangles. The end result is a planet that feels natural to walk, build, and play on.
A Planet of Possibilities
Even if Blocky Planet never turns into a commercial game, it sparks the imagination of what voxel worlds could look like in the future. A spherical blocky planet opens the door to exploration, construction, and gameplay mechanics that flat maps cannot match.
If you want to dive deeper into the technical details, from quad sphere math to distortion fixes, check out the full devlog here.
✨ Try Blocky Planet for free on Itch.io
👉 If you want to understand the math behind spherical worlds and voxel geometry, check out our book Essential Math for Game Devs, a practical guide to vectors, quaternions, and 3D transformations with Unity.
✨ Try Blocky Planet for free on Itch.io
👉 If you want to understand the math behind spherical worlds and voxel geometry, check out our book Essential Math for Game Devs, a practical guide to vectors, quaternions, and 3D transformations with Unity.
Check out our book!
We invite you to explore "Essential Math for Game Devs", a comphensive book on the concepts and fundamentals seen in this post.
Other posts that might interest you.
-
This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating a UI blur in Unity using Shader Graph, a node-based shader creation tool. -
Shader Graph is great for multi-platform games, but for advanced control and efficiency, learning HLSL and ShaderLab is key. Explore these techniques in depth with the Unity Shaders Bible! -
Sprite Masks on 3D Quads? Not quite, but with the power of shaders, you can create a similar effect!
