Java Edition Alpha

Alpha was the fifth phase in the development cycle of Minecraft. It succeeded Infdev, and was the fourth Minecraft development stage to have some of its versions released to the public. There was only one type of game mode playable in this version — Survival. One of Alpha's most striking differences to modern versions of Minecraft is the bright green color used by all foliage blocks, as biomes were not implemented at the time.

Unlike other phases of the game's development, the start of Alpha cannot be exactly pinpointed. The first version to display text "Alpha" in-game was Alpha v1.0.1, released on July 2, 2010. However, upon the release of that version, Notch stated that he "just arbitrarily decided that the previous version was 1.0.0",[1] thus making Alpha retroactively decided to have begun on the release of the second June 30, 2010, version of Infdev. Additionally, there is evidence for Alpha having actually begun on June 29, 2010, with Notch mentioning in a June 30 blog post "the version that was called “infdev” up until yesterday",[2] thus implying Infdev 20100629 was the first version of Alpha. Infdev 20100629 was the version that added the offline client, and IRC logs show that people were referring to this as "alpha" upon release.[3]

During the Alpha phase, Minecraft was updated very frequently due to Notch working full-time on Minecraft since June 1, 2010,[4] and having a small company made later (Mojang).[5] Bug fixes and tweaks could happen throughout the week, appearing on the game's development blog, with major additions and changes appearing in 'Seecret' Friday updates, leaving the game's players to discover the included new features.