Minecraft: Pocket Edition does a strong job of adapting the popular building game to mobile devices, but it loses some of the deeper features in the process. But if you're just looking for an opportunity to build and explore on the go, you'll find plenty to love in this package. If you aren't familiar with Minecraft, the fundamentals are simple. You're dropped into a world where everything and everyone is composed of simple blocks, mine for resources, and then craft those resources into new buildings and items.

The most traditional game experience comes in the form of survival mode. In survival mode, you'll spend your days mining because monsters come out at night. New players will have trouble surviving the onslaught, so a tense dynamic of scavenging to fortify your base dominates the early few hours of gameplay. As you start to build your resources, you can venture further, build a more elaborate home, and confront the enemies more fairly. That's because you won't just be building your stronghold and defenses with the resources you scavenge, but you'll also be using it to expand your weapons and armor. There's no story mode here. Instead, you're just tasked with surviving as long as possible. As you get further into the game, the threat of enemies remains but is sidelined in favor of giving you the latitude to build out your own paradise. But if you're looking for a tense experience, the difficulty of this mode disappointingly fades away after just a few hours of play.

If you'd rather not have the risk of survival mode - or if you just want to build what you want without restrictions - creative mode is built explicitly with the needs of imaginative minds. In creative mode, you're dropped in the world with no threats, a fast method to navigate, and no limitations to what you can build. Or rather, the only limitations are defined by the platform. Minecraft: Pocket Edition has more limitations than the core version. Most notably is the smaller size of worlds. That gives more demanding players less space to expand. There's also less content in terms of both enemies to fight and materials to mine. That said, there's a constant stream of new content from the developer. Even if Minecraft: Pocket Edition is a little behind its older sibling, the developers are making a serious effort to keep it current with new updates.

Porting a console or PC game over to a mobile platform while retaining a natural control scheme can be a daunting task, but Minecraft: Pocket Edition absolves itself well. Navigation uses a simple onboard keyboard that includes directional buttons and a jump key, and strafe buttons appear when you hold down the forward button. Minecraft doesn't have the most complex combat, but the system in place makes it seem about as natural as you could expect from a mobile interface. Moving around the world feels smooth and authentic.

And if the current controls aren't to your liking, you aren't stuck with them. Updates to the interface give you a lot of flexibility for remapping your buttons, and there's even a control scheme that better replicates the experience of playing with a mouse and keyboard. It can sometimes feel like emulating a version of the PC game on your phone, but it offers a higher level of precision for players who are willing to adjust to the somewhat finicky controls.

If being able to move around the world is important, being able to manipulate the environment is doubly so. And without a keyboard and mouse, that could be a real hassle. But the fundamentals here are strong. All you have to do to mine a block is to hold down on it with your thumb. Closing in gives you more precision over your controls, and a mined block will slowly fill up a meter before breaking with a satisfying rumble of your phone. Similarly, picking up items is as simple as tapping them. They'll automatically enter your inventory without the need to drag or organize them. As an added means to ameliorate the somewhat more limited controls, Minecraft: Pocket Edition's creative mode allows you to fly around the level with ease.

Exploring the world of Minecraft on your own can be fun in its own right, but Minecraft: Pocket Edition has also ported over a multiplayer mode. And they've done an especially impressive job of making sure that it's optimized for the needs of mobile players. There are four different ways users can open their game up online, but the easiest is via Wi-Fi. Four players can explore each others' worlds together as long as they're on the same network.

Even cooler is the fact that traditional Minecraft players and those on mobile devices exist in the same universe. Whether your friends are on Xbox or PC, they can connect with one another easily. That makes Pocket Edition feel less like a segregated ghetto of the series and more like a slimmed-down but fully functional member of the family. Just keep in mind that there's still no ban functionality in Pocket Edition so you'll want to keep your server private unless you want to be harassed by random players.

And you don't have to worry about Pocket Edition being a one-off novelty that will be quickly forgotten. Years into its existence, it's still getting continuous updates designed to polish up the experience and bring in elements from the console and PC games. These include expansions on the size of the world, new avatars to play with, new types of blocks, and hardcore end game content like the Enderdragon. Even if you somehow make it to the end of the current content available, you can expect more to release just on the horizon.

That said, there is one element of the game where Pocket Edition simply can't keep up. Minecraft: Pocket Edition doesn't offer support for mods. And with a big part of the Minecraft experience coming from sharing your creations with others, that's a big disappointment. It's an issue that Mahjong will hopefully ameliorate in the coming years, but it's hard to imagine how the software could be scaled up on mobile platforms to accommodate those needs.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition undoubtedly suffers from the limitations of a mobile device, but it does an astoundingly good job of capturing the authentic Minecraft experience. Whether you're an experienced Minecraft fan looking for a way to play on the go or a new player looking for a more accessible entryway into fandom, Pocket Edition can deliver the goods.

Pros:

• Retains most of the beloved elements of Minecraft
• Continues to receive steady release updates
• Cross-play compatibility with PC and Xbox

Cons:

• Limited environments compared to the PC version
• No support for player-created mods