Minecraft Marketplace moves fast. With every week that goes by, incredible new add-ons, worlds, mini games, and mash-up packs join the plethora of DLC already roosting on the Marketplace like loveable little birds. You can download birds, right? 

And now, with the arrival of sulfur cubes, it seems that Marketplace creators are working even faster, harder, and creative-er. How else would you explain the smorgasbord of new sulfurous delights now available for your delectation? How else would you explain the fact that these add-ons and worlds transform Minecraft with sulfury sports, sulfury contests, and even sulfury weapons? You simply can't.  

So, it's time for this humble (yet heroic) Minecraft.net writer to jack in to the Marketplace matrix once again and report back on what he finds. Will he come away with first impressions of seven new pieces of DLC or just a severe case of sulfur-induced nausea? Spoiler: it's both. 

Cube Breakers 

Please don't read too much into this, but I just think it's really fun to demolish things. To biff a block into non-existence. To blast a big ugly hole in the side of an intricate build. To dismantle. To destroy.  

No matter how much they deny it while slowly backing away from me, Simply Brilliant (the talented team responsible for Cube Breakers) are clearly on the exact same page. After all, they've transformed Minecraft into a classic Breakout-style arcade game that's all about revelling in the destructive potential of a bouncing ball.  

Across heaps of stages in a lovingly crafted campaign, I steer a paddle left and right across the bottom of the screen, bouncing the pleasingly squidgy little sulfur cube away each time it hurtles towards me, clearing pesky blocks off the screen as it goes. My astonishingly fast reflexes ("adequate", raved my doctor during my latest check-up) and some game-changing power ups produce chain reactions of chaotic, explosive glee.  

Rating: One hundred cubes, each bouncier than the last 

Sulfur Strongholds

If there's one thing videogames have taught me about ancient civilizations, it's that those old-timey folk sure did love puzzles. Those historical so-and-sos would never be seduced by the convenience of a key, no way! If they're going to the trouble of building a door, you can be sure it'll only open if you can focus the rays of the midday sun through a magical ruby or something.  

Well, it seems that the old-timers have been at it again in Sulfur Strongholds by Float Studios​, which adds ancient, puzzle-filled ruins to the sulfur caves in your Minecraft worlds. After much Overworld exploration, I hack my way into a sulfur cave - dodging hostile mobs and the pools of bubbling, nausea-inducing water - and soon discover the door to my first sulfur stronghold.  

Inside is a series of ingenious block-sliding puzzles, in which I delicately whomp sulfur cubes onto devilishly positioned pressure plates in order to unlock the door to the next level. After solving three such floors - each more fiendish than the last - the door to the treasure vault at the heart of the stronghold swings open and I claim my reward. No keys required. 

Rating: 10,000 years of perfect silence broken by an oaf pushing blocks around 

Sulfur Golf​

They call it the sport of kings. The divine eighteen. The butler's one white egg. That's right, we're talking about golf. And ever since I was unjustly issued a lifetime ban by my nearest real-life course, I've been getting my fairway thrills from Sulfur Golf by Blockworks.  

Each hole in Sulfur Golf challenges you to come in under par, making use of a powerful driver and delicate putter to steer your sulfur cube towards the hole. To do well, you'll need to pay careful attention to the layout of each hole - avoiding bunkers and water features and tangled undergrowth - as well as mastering the timing of the power meter in order to control the force of your thwacks. 

To make matters even better, you can also hop into a golf cart, slam your foot on the gas, and tear up the green as you careen to the next hole. I'll show you "behaviour verging on total disregard for the safety of fellow members", Greater London Golf Club and Driving Range. I'll show you…  

Rating: A hole in one from an unfathomable distance 

Sulfur Rush​

Catching an elevator before the doors close. Eating an ice cream on a summer's day. Sprinting - desperate, panting, wild-eyed sprinting - to your airport's departure gate because you just spent 90 fruitless minutes trying to strike up a friendship with a security agent.  

These are all totally normal, relatable situations in which you need to rush. None of them prepared me, however, for the chaotic, helter-skelter, white-knuckle pace of Sulfur Rush by Block Studios.  

This frenetic minigame sees you bouncing hurtling sulfur cubes through elaborate obstacle courses - the kind where you have to navigate narrow pathways while entire sections of wall slide out to push you into the abyss, like horrible architectural bullies. In practice, it feels like someone took golf and doused it in caffeine and sulfur physics and raw, liquid energy.  

Rating: A double espresso that I can definitely drink without wincing 

Sulfur Cube TEST LAB

Bunsen burners. Beakers full of bubbling liquids. Those white coats that for some reason I look absolutely stunning in. Yep, we're talking about science, and if you need me you'll find me sprinting to the lab faster than you can say "experimental rigor".  

That's because Sulfur Cube TEST LAB by KA Studios is the kind of advanced, high-tech laboratory that incredibly specific dreams are made of. Everywhere I look, I find pristine, science-y things: bulkheads, tubes, buttons.  

Once you're done moon-eyeing the shiny surfaces, you'll find that TEST LAB is really a playground for experiments with sulfur cubes. As you move from one part of the laboratory to the next, you'll find elaborately constructed research stations, which all sounds very highbrow until I explain that the tests are mostly about how squishy, bouncy, or explosive various flavors of sulfur cube are. Just press the buttons and watch the chaos unfold. While making scrupulous scientific notes, of course. 

And when you're ready to lay down your conical flask for the day, you'll find a tennis court, a bowling alley, and a soccer pitch waiting for you to cut loose on. Hey, scientists need downtime too.  

Rating: An unprecedented 7.0 on the Mandeville Fun Scale

Trick Shot Tycoon

Now here's a premise I can relate to. Trick Shot Tycoon by Cleverlike casts you as an aspiring YouTuber on a mission to boost your subscriber count. It's like they made a game about my life! But whereas I'm trying to find an audience for my exhaustively detailed reviews of office printers, here you'll be trying to accumulate fame and fortune with increasingly elaborate trick shots. I suppose they're both exciting in their own way.  

Your trick shots start small - you might bounce a sulfur cube across your bed into a waiting bowl of steaming soup, for instance, which is a genuine example from the game and one that I think displays an appalling disregard for the state of your bedding. Maybe that's just the kind of devil-may-care attitude to soup spillage that you need in order to make it big on YouTube these days. I don't know. Maybe I don't want to know. 

Later, you'll attempt much bigger, more ambitious, and more spectacular trick shots. It's not long before you'll find yourself launching a cube from a mid-air helicopter into the pool of a cruise ship, for instance. And, thanks to the unique physical properties of sulfur cubes, you can adjust their bounciness, their weight, and their slippery-slideiness simply by changing which block they have absorbed.  

Rating: one subscribe button, thoroughly smashed

Sulfur Blaster​  

Swords and bows and tridents are all okay. No, they're great really. It's just, if I have to go up against an army of hissing creepers, shambling skeletons, and horrible illagers that just won't play fair, I'd love to have something with a bit more heft.  

Enter Sulfur Blaster by Heropixel Games​, an add-on that arms you with the kind of high-tech weaponry that would turn even the most by-the-book scientist into a cackling comicbook supervillain. You will have to put in some legwork first, though, which I always feel is an appalling thing to ask of me and I am outraged.

First things first, you'll have to find a sulfur cube, infuse it with a block of your choice, and then catch it in a freshly crafted sulfur jar. Give yourself a brief - I said BRIEF - pat on the back and then set about crafting yourself an empty blaster. With that rigmarole complete, you're now able to use your jarred sulfur block as a form of adorable (yet ruinously destructive) ammunition.  

The properties of your blaster beam are dictated by the type of block you fed to your sulfur cube, enabling you to fire everything from laser beams to lightning to TNT to stacks of leatherbound books that will flap towards your enemies and peck at them like viscous, literary birds. I must stress that this is a real beam-type and you simply must try it. 

Rating: 10 solid minutes of maniacal laughter out of 10 

Phew, what a whirlwind rundown of the most sulfurous corners of our beloved Marketplace. The exertion has left me weak and disoriented and positively reeking of sulfur. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and shower for a full calendar month.