Top 5 Android and iPhone games to play while waiting for Minecraft Pocket Edition

The sensible thing to do is to wait.

There are plenty of good Android and iPhone games that are worthy of your attention - you don’t need to download a disappointing alternative to the real thing.

Yes, I know it’s tempting - it’s stupidly tempting, in fact. With Minecraft Pocket Edition seemingly months away from release, what can you do if you’re bursting at the seams for a mine-fest in the interim?

You could download these five games, for starters, but I’m going to level with you here - they’re not as brill as the real thing.

Still, they’re worth checking out, if only to sate your irrepressible Minecraft appetite for a short amount of time.

‘Woah’, was my first thought when I started up World Explorer on the iPad 2, ‘this is just like Minecraft!’

It isn’t, of course. While World Explorer has the graphics and the sandbox, create-your-own-environment gameplay of its inspiration, there’s no exploring and survival to get your teeth into, no moving monsters, and no crafting, buttons, or any other more complicated mechanics at play.

If you’re one of the people that mainly enjoyed Minecraft’s other mode where you just use the different tiles to construct your own paradise, then you’re likely to enjoy World Builder, especially as it allows you to import worlds from the game itself for you to tinker with.

The inbuilt random level creator isn’t quite as expressive as the original's, and it is prone to a fair amount of slowdown during land creation. However, it’s still quite impressive, and a nice taster of what Minecraft on mobiles could be like in the future.

Possibly the closest Android users can get to recreating Minecraft on their handsets right now, Droidcraft eschews its inspiration’s 3D graphics in favour of a 2D, top-down view.

What it doesn’t relinquish is a level of depth (sorry) that other titles lack - so there’s the randomly generated worlds, tons of different resource types, and loads of monsters to bash up with a crafted pickaxe.

Unfortunately, the touch controls are seemingly designed to infuriate as much as possible.

While the idea of holding your finger down at varying intervals sounds like it could work on paper, in reality it just leads to misplaced blocks and ‘blind-mining’ (you can’t see what you’re doing because your finger’s in the way).

Get past the rocky introduction and you’ll find a pretty decent attempt at the sandbox genre, but it’s worth downloading the trial version (download) before slapping down the cash.

I Dig It Expeditions isn’t that much like Minecraft, really, yet it is similar in the fact that it’s set mostly underground, and that it’s as addictive as crack.

There’s no sandbox element, mind: you’re given a specific objective in each of the different locations and tasked with mining down, selling your wares, and upgrading so that you can dig further down for more lucrative prizes.

It’s hard not to get attached to the ever-growing network of inter-connecting tunnels, though.

If you don’t find yourself calling them names as you desperately jetpack back up to the surface with your fuel counter on zero, you’re more of a man than I.

If you’re not after the ‘build-your-own-kingdom’ component of Minecraft, and find the idea of looking for resources underground and building a complicated network of tunnels far more enjoyable, then Gem Miner: Dig Deeper may be what you’re after.

In this modern offshoot of the classic Boulderdash, your task is simply to burrow deep, mine resources, sell them, and put up constructions like lifts and ladders to help you quarry even deeper underground. All the while avoiding falling rocks and cave-ins.

It’s saddled with some less-than-ideal touch controls, which will take a little time to get used to, and it lacks the balance of I Dig It Expeditions on iOS, but for Android owners that can’t get along with Droidcraft’s interface (me), it should satisfy for now.

Another title that really nails the Minecraft look, if not the feel, Eden is noteworthy not just because it runs quickly on even the older iPhones (unlike World Builder), but because you get a special ‘fire’ button that lets you...light everything on fire!

I know you’re looking at the page with a confused expression on your face, but placing a bunch of trees together and setting fire to them is surprisingly fun (just don’t do it in real life, ok).

Like World Builder, Eden is more a ‘paint your own world’ title than a survival and exploration game, with the touch interface allowing for placements of various tile types in order to construct your very own utopia (made out of blocks).

It’s not going to satisfy those that want to hide in caves from creepers and zombies, but for wannabe ‘skull fortress’ builders, it will certainly pass the time while you wait for the real thing to arrive.