The Minecraft Play Club kids had their first meeting of 2018 at Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library Jan. 10.

Assistant Director Desirée Scorcia, who also serves as youth services coordinator, started the program two years ago. Scorcia said she’s happy that with her new duties as assistant director, she is still able to act as youth services coordinator for the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) side of children’s programming.

One of the programs she continues to manage is the weekly Minecraft Play Club. She started the group in January 2016. It quickly became popular enough that Scorcia had to split the group in two, with a younger group for kindergarten through grade four and an older group, up to seventh grade.

She described Minecraft as a “sandbox game.” Players are provided with a world, and they can build virtual 3-D structures, using virtual blocks of materials: stone, wood, sand, etc. Kids can generate their own landscape, and name it. They can build villages, mountains, people and animals in their own little virtual world. People and animals can be virtually killed, but it’s all good — they will be “re-spawned,” or brought back to life, and show up somewhere else in the game.

One of the kids developed “Coastal Village.” There was a house in the village, and Scorcia navigated her way into it to find a bench, a table and a bookcase.

As she made her way around the virtual village, villagers appeared randomly and walked around the buildings. There were sidewalks, and blue water in the harbor. It’s difficult to describe if you’re not a virtual game player, and are over 16.

Scorcia said kids love the game, and that was apparent with the four players who showed up Jan.10. All of the kids had their own tablets that they had already created their Minecraft villages on, and they didn’t waste any time getting started playing the creative game, both individually and competing with one another.

The kids are transported by bus from school each Wednesday for the 2 p.m. meeting.

Anyone interested in joining Scorcia and the kids to play Minecraft can call the library at 633-3112. The next Minecraft Play Club, for ages kindergarten and up, will meet on Jan. 17 from 2 to 3 p.m. Players are asked to bring their own Minecraft PE device or laptop, or they can use one of the library’s.