Minecraft: Guide to Redstone Review

March 9, 2019 at 3:39am
By Jason Stettner

Redstone is one of the more complicated elements of Minecraft. It can be ignored entirely, but when used you can create some fantastic devices. It acts as a form of electricity as you place this mystical red sand down and then give it a power source. You can create hidden doors, clocks, or even music playing machines. It's impressive, and there's a lot of complexity to what's actually a rather simple type of item. You place rows of it, then connect it to a power source in order to have it run.

You can use certain permanent fixtures to activate it as well such as a button. These elements are all gone over with decent depth in the book. It's also quite up to date, just missing some of the latest note block tweaking options for sound. The changes to the note blocks are a minimal change. The book is split into three core portions. The first is the basics, which goes over the essential elements in understanding how to use this material. The second chapter builds upon the first where you learn about connections and circuit usage. The final chapter goes a step further by showcasing some more complex builds.

The book is cleanly presented with a white and red color theme. You can tell its Minecraft based, but it comes across as more of a professional offering. The pages are precise, typically offering an image and then small written blurbs around them. There are highlight tips and other little facts placed throughout. It's generally presented in a simple, and streamlined formula.

This was generally clear, or as simple as this type of building process can go. I found all of the content to be generally helpful in regards to understanding how to use the material and to deploy it within the world. There are also some small tips on finding it. Some of the later builds are a tad wild, they could have focused on some more simplistic implementations of the redstone. It goes from mostly simple instructions to then jump into complex creations.

The Conclusion

The Minecraft: Guide to Redstone book brings detailed instructions on the essentials of building with the magic material. It'll go over all the essential basics of how to use it, while building slowly towards the more advanced mechanics. This might be slightly more difficult to understand for the younger audiences, but I do believe they simplify the process as much as it possibly could be.

You get a wide range of typical contraptions and setups, with a dive into some more complex structures. I feel it's presented well, yet at the same time they could have went over some more complex, helpful creations. The ones they picked to showcase advanced redstone work were neat, yet not some necessarily something that would be super beneficial to regular survival.

Minecraft: Guide to Redstone Book Review
Author: Craig Jelley
ISBN: 9781984818348
Review Copy Provided by Penguin Random House Canada

Rating Overall: 8.2