IF you haven’t heard of Minecraft, you don’t spend enough time on the Internet. (Good for you.) For a lot of other, the open-world construction game Minecraft has become an addiction on par with Angry Birds. The game debuted on Android as a Sony Xperia Play exclusive back in August, then a general Android Market release in October. Between then and now, Micecraft Pocket Edition has racked up an incredible 700,000 downloads across the Android and iPhone platforms.

True, there’s games that have an even bigger install base – Angry Birds has over 50 million installs on Android alone. But that game’s free on Android (and pretty cheap on iOS as well) whereas developer Mojang asks for $6.99 for Minecraft, pricing it higher than the vast majority of Android games. And not without due cause: the open-world 3D title packs a lot of gameplay into a small package. That said, it got a big boost back in December when Google included Minecraft in its 10 Billion Apps promotion and sold the game for a paltry ten cents.

What’s next for Minecraft? Pocket Edition is still missing a good chunk of the functionality found in the desktop counterpart, but a planned update on February 8th will include a lot of absent features. Standbys found in later versions, like Survival elements, animals and more block options. Unfortunately you still won’t have access to the game’s extensive crafting system. If you’re still on the fence, you can try the new Demo version in the Android Market without spending a penny – but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

[via Pocket Gamer]