A few significant changes make for a promising new take on the genre.
The world itself is dramatically different from Minecraft, specifically because it's composed of triangular tiles instead of blocks (additionally inspired by many of the designers' time spent with toys called Magna-Tiles). Seriously, while it may sound like a minor distinction at first, a world constructed of triangular tiles opens up a host of possibilities for how it can be shaped. Tiles can be used to create cubes, but over the course of exploring the world of patterns your character will collect special blocks that teach patterns like pyramids, tetrahedrons and more. Additionally you can create your own patterns in a forge of sorts, using these and any patterns you find to then create objects in the world out of the materials you find.
The types of materials you use really matter, too. You can collect wood tiles, bone tiles, stone tiles and a number of others, all of which have their own physical properties thanks to Patterns' physics engine. For instance you could take the clay you've gathered and build a column of cubes in a stack, just like any new Minecraft player does with the dirt they dig. Only unlike Minecraft, the clay at the base of the column will eventually give out to the weight above it, breaking apart and potentially causing the entire column to fall over. Thus if you want to build a bridge or tall structure you'll have to consider the strength of your foundation, learning how certain geometrical shapes like pyramids and tetrahedrons play off one another to better distribute weight, or widening the base of a structure so the load's more evenly dispersed.
The hope is also that physics and the different properties they're applying to the materials you gather will allow you to do things they haven't predicted yet. At one point during the demo one of the team constructed the aforementioned column, breaking it intentionally so it fell like a tree and made an impromptu bridge across a chasm. Humble was surprised and delighted, commenting how he'd, "never seen anyone do that." Just like Minecraft the team knows that Patterns will be broken, tweaked and utterly abused by the community. In fact, they're counting on it. This can be as simple as using the included tools to do things they never managed to conjure up at the studio, or as complex as eventually creating mods. They want to make the game as open as possible, and Humble finds the potential for mods exciting and something they want to support.
If you want to get in on the ground floor in Patterns, you won't have to wait long. Just like Notch's little game that could, Patterns is releasing for as low as $10 as a pre-alpha product called "Genesis Release", with the initial fee netting early adopters all future updates. These updates include things like randomly generated worlds (the first one is pre-made, though you can give your friends the file so they can see what you built), multiplayer, more materials to collect, and liquids (which will potentially have physical force and modify the world). The craziest part about all of this, though, is that the first release is happening as early as this week.
Quite simply, Humble says the team set out to create, "a little universe of creativity," starting with, "a very simple tool set and growing it out from there." The promise of creating your own universe is a bit outside of the current scope of Pattern's Genesis Release, but with promised updates, an obvious love for community input and a low barrier to entry, it's hard not to be excited to see whether this simple idea can become a phenomenon.
Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on Twitter and on IGN.