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Imagine a virtual world where every element, from clouds to rocks to trees, is made up of small cubes. In this universe, everything is built from blocks. This world is that of voxels, a true revolution in 3D that emerged in the 1990s. A voxel is simply a fusion of the words “volume” and “pixel” : essentially, it’s a cube placed within a vast 3D grid. By assembling them, one can create objects, terrains, or even beautiful particle effects.

Although voxels are used in many other fields (such as medical imaging, for example), we will focus here primarily on their impact in the world of video games and their influence on the game design of certain titles.

The First Voxel Games

When we think of a voxel game, it’s hard not to immediately think of Minecraft, the most famous of them all. But sorry to bust the myth: Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of Minecraft, didn’t actually invent the concept of a game entirely made of voxels. The very first game to use them as a 3D rendering technique was Comanche: Maximum Overkill, released in 1992 on DOS and developed by NovaLogic.

In this aerial combat game, players pilot an RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter, tasked with destroying ground targets as well as other helicopters. At the time, procedurally generated terrain using voxels was a true revolution. Since voxels are simple cubes, they make calculations easier and the game smoother, which greatly contributed to its success. In fact, NovaLogic patented voxel technology the same year, marking the beginning of the voxel era in video games.

In 1995, another game of the same type emerged: City Runner, also for DOS, created by John Isidoro. In this game, players take on the role of a police officer driving a flying car in a city full of skyscrapers, with the goal of rescuing citizens in danger. The gameplay is fairly basic, it’s a classic driving game, but with a major twist : the map is infinite. As long as you don’t crash and the time to save the citizens hasn’t run out, the world continues to generate procedurally, meaning randomly but following specific rules, thus creating an endless city.

Voxels were at the heart of this innovation, as they allow buildings to be generated in real time. Instead of having a single 3D model for the map, it is made up of thousands of small 3D models, namely cubes.

And this is where the magic happens : voxels are no longer just a way to optimize games : they become a new tool for designing game levels, which can now be infinite. The level design in these games no longer involves manually creating each level (with a few exceptions), but rather establishing the rules for the automatic generation of the environment.

This not only optimizes game performance thanks to the simplicity and uniformity of voxels, but also provides a different experience in each playthrough, as we will see shortly.

The Most Popular Voxel Game: Minecraft

And when we talk about an infinite world, once again, it’s hard not to think immediately of Minecraft. It’s no coincidence that it remains THE quintessential voxel game, the famous “game with cubes,” and, above all, the best-selling game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold since 2011.

But as I mentioned earlier, Minecraft wasn’t the first voxel game. It drew inspiration from other titles, notably Infiniminer, released in 2009, which closely resembles it in the way the world is generated: blocks grouped into chunks (16×16 blocks) that players can explore endlessly (hence the name 😉). The game already featured the concept of mining resources, a core element of Minecraft’s gameplay!

What truly propelled Minecraft to stardom is not only the enormous size of its worlds but also the richness and complexity of the experience it offers. Thanks to procedural generation (enabled by voxels), each game is unique. In Minecraft, you’re not just a player, you’re an explorer in a world that belongs to you. From hidden treasures to mysterious caves, and even villages of NPCs ready to trade a wooden fishing rod for 50 emeralds (if you’re lucky!), every play session is a surprise.

This is where its magic lies : each world is a different, one-of-a-kind adventure. As Forrest Gump might say : the world of Minecraft is like a box of chocolates : you never know what you’re going to get.

Voxels play an essential role in this experience. Beyond allowing developers to create fully procedural worlds, their geometric simplicity paved the way for a revolutionary new mechanic: building. In 2009, few games offered players such creative freedom. Typically, players had a palette of predefined 3D models they could place in static levels. But with the arrival of Minecraft, everything changed.

In Minecraft, every element of the world (voxel/block) can be placed, destroyed, moved, replaced, and more. Players can modify anything—nothing is fixed. Want a bridge? Place some blocks. A gigantic fortress? Place some blocks. A 1:1 scale recreation of planet Earth? Place some blocks. (Yes, there’s actually a project like that underway.)

It’s this creative freedom, combined with the exploration of an infinite world, that attracts over 50 million players every month.

Of course, Minecraft isn’t perfect. Game optimization has always been a tricky issue. Managing billions of voxels simultaneously requires significant resources and can quickly impact FPS. The game uses tricks like the chunk system to reduce the load, rendering only the chunks within the player’s field of view. But even with this, performance can sometimes suffer. This forces the game to make some compromises: simplified lighting effects, limited animations, and somewhat basic textures. These trade-offs ensure the game runs smoothly on most machines, but they can frustrate players seeking a more advanced visual experience.

Since 2020: The Revival of Voxel Games

These players were finally rewarded a decade later with Cloudpunk, released in April 2020. Developed by Ion Lands, this adventure game immerses players in a cyberpunk universe where you play as Rania, a delivery driver in a massive city called Nivalis. Imagine a mix of neon lights, endless skyscrapers, and dark alleys reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner or the game Cyberpunk 2077.

The core gameplay? Driving a flying car through this enormous city, exploring its hidden corners and secrets.

Like Minecraft, Cloudpunk uses voxels to build its world, but with a major difference: here, the voxels are much smaller, allowing for more detailed 3D models while keeping that pixelated charm. Unlike Minecraft’s procedural approach, where everything is generated on the fly, the city of Nivalis is entirely handcrafted. The result: a more coherent city and fewer generation bugs (like Minecraft’s infamous Far Lands). Sure, you lose the “modular” aspect of voxels, but you gain in realism and graphical quality.

This leap forward (the increase in the number of voxels that can be displayed on screen) is made possible by the technological advances of the 2010s, whether through more powerful graphics cards or better-optimized game engines. Cloudpunk can offer a voxelized world while delivering impressive visual effects, such as realistic reflections, shadows, and lighting… And in a neon-filled universe, that’s absolutely essential !

However, Cloudpunk has weaknesses in its gameplay : occasional slowdowns, repetitive mechanics here and there… As a result, it received mixed reviews. Still, it marked a turning point in the history of voxels, showing them not just as ugly cubes but as a new way to create 3D worlds with real visual quality.

This approach was taken up by another game just a few months later, in September 2020: Unrailed!, a cooperative construction game developed by Indoor Astronaut.

In Unrailed, you have to lay down tracks at lightning speed to prevent the train from derailing. If you can’t keep up, it’s a disaster! But don’t worry, the game has a soft, bright atmosphere, far from the dark world of Cloudpunk.

Unrailed also uses voxels, with some elements that aren’t voxels but remain low-poly (simple, not very detailed). The gameplay has been very well received by both critics and players, offering multiple game modes, local and online multiplayer, and – most relevant for this discussion on voxels – the procedural generation of environments, this time in a “roguelike” style. As the train moves forward, the environments change with procedurally generated chunks. Like in a roguelike, players have no idea what the next environment will be and must be ready for anything.

This is where voxels show their full potential: beyond the now-popular “voxelized” visual style, they allow a Minecraft-like experience, with a unique world for each player that generates dynamically as the game (and the train) progresses.

Finally, in 2022, a little gem arrived in the voxel gaming world: Teardown, a sandbox destruction game developed by Tuxedo Labs. While Minecraft had revolutionized building mechanics, Teardown takes the opposite approach, focusing entirely on… destruction. And when I say “entirely,” I really mean everything!

In most games released at that time, you could destroy a few planks, smash some zombies, or break some windows. It was fun, but quite limited. Every destructible object required time and resources to be modeled in 3D at every stage of its destruction. The result? A fairly small number of destructible objects.

But Teardown completely flips this logic: absolutely everything in the game can be destroyed. Your house, your car, the walls, the fences… ab-so-lute-ly everything!

What’s incredible is that even though destruction is at the heart of the gameplay, it never becomes boring. Every swing of the sledgehammer, every explosion is incredibly satisfying. The small voxels used in Teardown allow for impressive levels of detail and stylish visual effects, reminiscent of what could be admired in Cloudpunk, but here serving total chaos.

Teardown quickly gained popularity, not only for its extremely gratifying gameplay, but also for its realistic aesthetics and its unique “voxelized” style. This isn’t just a game where you break things : it’s THE game that takes destruction to its ultimate extreme.

Conclusion

In the end, voxels – those seemingly simple little cubes – have shown a new way of approaching the universe of video games. From pioneers like Comanche: Maximum Overkill to the massive success of Minecraft, and through gems like Teardown, they have proven that creativity in video games, both from developers and players, knows no bounds.

These little cubes have also provided something that few other game mechanics allow : total freedom. Whether it’s building cities, exploring infinite worlds, or smashing everything with a hammer, voxels let players invent their own adventures.

To conclude, Erno Rubik, the inventor of the famous Rubik’s Cube, once said, “I love the simplicity of the cube because it is a very clear geometric shape, and I love geometry because it is the study of how the entire universe is structured.” This idea also applies to voxel worlds, which, like our universe made of atoms, are built from small basic elements. Each voxel is like an atom: alone it’s useless, but combined with others, it opens the door to endless possibilities.

Article by Joseph Rool – 2025

Sources :

Wikipedia Article about voxels and their different applications : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel

List of voxel games from MobyGames : Visual technique / style: Voxel graphics – MobyGames

Player counter for Minecraft : https://activeplayer.io/minecraft/

Wikiepdia/Others articles about games studied in this article :

• Comanche: Maximum Overkill — Wikipedia
• City Runner – MobyGames
• Minecraft – Wikipedia
• Infiniminer – Wikipedia
• Cloudpunk – Wikipedia
• Unrailed! – Wikipedia
• Teardown – Wikipedia

Images credits :

• Voxelized building (cover picture) : Antoine Lendrevie
• Comanche : Maximum Overkill Screenshot : https://www.pcgamer.com/great-moments-in-pc-gaming-being-blown-away-by-voxels-in-comanche/
• City Runner Screenshots : CityRunner : Free Borrow & Streaming
• Minecraft Wallaper : https://www.minecraft.net/fr-fr
• Infiniminer Screenshot : https://games.softpedia.com/get/Freeware-Games/Infiniminer.shtml#sgal_4
• Minecraft Alpha Screenshot : https://minecraft.wiki/w/File:Alpha_v1.1.1.png
• Cloudpunk Screenshots : Pris en jeux
• Unrailed! Screenshot : Unrailed Trailer Nintendo Switch – YouTube
• Teardown Screenshot 1 : https://therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2022/05/27/teardown-voxel-destruction/
• Teardown Screenshot 2 (Explosion) : https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Teardown-featured-2000×1270-1.jpg