Decoration ideas: candles, lamps and a crackling fireplace, without a single mod

Can you have real furniture in a voxel game?

In a lot of block games, a "chair" is a stair block with a sign stuck to it, and anything fancier needs a mod. In Openworld, furniture is part of the game. A table, a chair, a stool, an armchair, a sofa, a bench, a bed, a shelf, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, a nightstand, a desk and even a grandfather clock: each one is a sculpted model, made of tiny voxels, that you craft and place.

And they're not just for show. You sit in the armchair, you lie down in the bed, the wardrobe holds 36 slots, 3 rows of 12, and the nightstand keeps a few things too, like a chest. A shelf takes up to 4 objects; a vase takes up to 3 flowers. Openworld is a voxel sandbox on a whole round planet, and your house on it can look exactly like a home.

• 18furniture materials: 3 woods, stone, marble, metals, glass…
• 16fabric patterns, from gingham to toile
• 16dyes for fabric, candles and glass
• 15 mthe reach of the street lamp's light

click a light to switch it

Dusk
The day is going. The room goes dark…Keep scrolling: the lights come on one by one.

Candles
Candles burn the moment you set them down.A soft orange light that reaches 8 m, and it never burns out.

Fireplace
The fire crackles, the whole room shimmers.A strong light that flickers on two rhythms, with sparks.

Electric lamps
Flip the switch: the lamps come on.Warm light, as long as a cable brings them power.

Street lamp
Outside, the street lamp's cold white light.Its light reaches 15 m: the path home is lit.

Your turn
Click a light to switch it on or off.And click the cat. Gently.

Lighting: candles, lamps, fireplace

In Openworld, light is real: each source lights the voxels around it in its own colour, and that changes everything in a room. Here are the three families, from the softest to the strongest.

Candles: soft, orange, and never out

A candle is a taper on a little dish, with runs of wax down its side and a flame that dances. It's lit the moment you set it down and stays lit: its soft orange light reaches about 8 m. On the crafting grid, wax over a string makes 4 white candles; add a dye on top and they take its colour, among the 16 dyes. The wax comes from a honeycomb melted down, from a bee nest or a hive of your own.

• Candle: wax or tallow round a wick of fibre, set on its little dish.
• Candlestick: three candles on a turned metal stem, the middle one higher (iron or gold).
• Chandelier: six curved arms hanging from a chain, a candle on each, in iron or gold; the crystal one carries glass drops.

Electric lamps and the light switch

Five lamps: the ceiling lamp (an opal globe or an enameled dome), the wall lamp with its swan neck, the floor lamp with its linen shade, the desk lamp (a banker's lamp, green glass shade and pull chain) and the street lamp, a four-paned lantern on a fluted post. A lamp lights up when a power cable brings it electricity from a generator; its bulb and shade glow, and the room takes their light (warm, about 14 m; the street lamp's is cold white, 15 m). A light switch on the wall, right-click, and everything behind it goes dark. The whole power side is in the electricity and power guide.

The fireplace: the centre of the house

The fireplace is 2 m by 2 m against a wall, in bricks or in stone: a hearth, an oak mantel, a hood up to the ceiling, firedogs, and up to 4 logs that burn down as the fuel runs out. It burns wood, planks, sticks, coal or charcoal, forty times slower than a furnace: a cubic metre of wood keeps it going for about four minutes, and it keeps burning even when you're away. It also cooks: a joint turns on the spit, a fish grills on the gridiron, done in 12 seconds.

Its strong light (about 14 m) flickers on two rhythms with the crackle, and the whole room shimmers with it. Smoke rises from the top of the hood, sparks fly in bursts.

Cosy bedroom ideas

Openworld has one bed, the single bed, in the wood and linen of its recipe. Put two single beds side by side and they become a double bed, with a shared mattress, two pillows and two blankets. You can even pair two different woods.

Lie down: your character settles on its back, head on the pillow, and the blanket drapes over the body with real folds (at High quality). At night, the bed becomes your respawn point. And when every player on the planet is in bed at night, the screen fades to black and the Sun rises. A detail that matters for your first nights.

• The reading corner: an armchair, a floor lamp behind it, a rug, a bookshelf. Nothing else.
• The cabin bedroom: redwood bed, gingham blanket, a candle on the nightstand, curtains half drawn.
• The attic: two single beds pushed together under the roof, a wall lamp above each side.
• The guest room: a single bed, a wardrobe with 36 slots for visitors' things, a vase of three flowers.

Curtains open and close with a right-click, like a door. A small object put on a table, a nightstand, a stool or a bench is drawn right on its top.

Living room: armchairs, plants, aquarium

Everything is placed to the voxel, like a torch: right where you aim, standing on what's under it (a block, a table), against the wall you aim at (wall lamp, switch, shelf, curtain), or hanging from the ceiling (chandelier, ceiling lamp). The preview turns red when nothing would hold it. That's what lets you set a candle on a table, a cushion on a sofa or a vase on a shelf exactly where you want.

• Seats: chair, stool, armchair, sofa (2 places), bench. Right-click to sit, Shift or Space to stand up; the game keeps going while you sit.
• Flower pots: terracotta on a saucer, a porcelain cachepot, a stone planter, a metal bucket, and 23 sculpted plants that sway.
• Glasses, bottles, jugs: fill them with a bucket and the liquid shows at its level, in its colour.
• Plates and bowls in porcelain, terracotta, wood or metal, with the real model of the food on them.
• Aquarium: sand, rocks, kelp and coral that wave, and up to 3 live fish (tropical, cod, salmon) that swim.
• A telescope on its tripod by the window: it's decoration, and it really works for watching the Moon's phases and eclipses.

Pottery: pots, vases, plates, tiles

Pots, vases, plates, bowls and jugs are made in the crafting grid, in the material of the cells: fired clay (terracotta), porcelain, glass, stone, metal or planks, each piece in the materials that suit it. A cell is a quarter block, 16 voxels.

1. 1

   Dig clay

   Clay lies on the beds of rivers and lakes.

2. 2

   Fire it in the Furnace

   Clay in the Furnace becomes terracotta; clay with sand beside it becomes bricks.

3. 3

   Shape it in the grid

   Five cells of terracotta in a cup shape make a flower pot, seven a vase, three make four bowls; a single cell makes two plates.

4. 4

   Tile the floor

   On the crafting grid, terracotta round bone meal (or white dye) makes white ceramic tiles — the porcelain of plates and pots — black dye makes black ones, and the two crossed make a checkerboard.

Textiles: weave, dye, sew

Curtains, rugs and cushions are made of real fabric, woven in one of 16 patterns: plain, stripes, gingham, tartan, chevron, dots, floral, damask, houndstooth, paisley, toile… Every pattern takes two colours, a ground and a motif. Try them below: it's the game's own formula, the colours are the game's 16 dyes.

1. 1

   Gather the fibre

   Wool from sheep, flax and cotton from the wild or a field, string from spiders: four fibres, four fabrics (wool, linen, cotton, silk).

2. 2

   Weave the fabric

   On the loom: 2 fibres of one kind and the dyes you choose make 1 fabric, plain in 6 seconds, patterned in 8. An empty dye slot leaves the fibre's own white, and costs nothing.

3. 3

   Sew

   On the sewing machine: a curtain (2 fabric, 1 fibre and a rod), a rug (3 fabric, 1 fibre), a cushion (1 fabric, 1 fibre, 1 wool for the stuffing). On a powered small cable, the loom and the sewing machine run four times faster.

4. 4

   Change your mind

   The dye vat, filled with water by the bucket, recolors fabric, curtains, rugs, cushions, armchairs, sofas, beds and candles. It also turns glass into stained glass.

Plaques instead of big signboards

To name a room or label a chest, Openworld has plaques: small engraved plates of about 23 by 12 cm, in wood, stone, marble, granite, quartz or metal. Screw one to a wall, set it on a little stake in the ground, or hang it from the ceiling by two thin wires. Right-click opens "Engrave the plaque": one line of 32 characters, engraved one pixel deep, in a colour that suits the material (gold in marble, black enamel in metal). Look at it from less than 3.5 m to read it.

Does light keep monsters away?

Yes — the light you place. In Openworld, no monster spawns within 14 m of a torch, a lantern, a fireplace or a lit lamp, or 8 m of a candle, and a monster that stays 3 seconds in that light — a ghost through a wall, a zombie through the door — goes up in smoke, as in sunlight. Farther away, the darkness of the sky decides, between 24 and 64 m from players, and in caves at any hour. So light the inside and the edges of your base, and keep walls and a door for what comes from the dark.

Who comes out after dark, and how light keeps a base safe, is in the night monsters guide. And for the shelter itself, start with building your house voxel by voxel.

Decoration ideas, room by room

• Kitchen: a fireplace with a joint on the spit, porcelain plates on a shelf, jugs of water, a checkerboard tiled floor.
• Dining room: an oak table, chairs, a crystal chandelier above, bowls with real food in them.
• Workshop: iron candles, iron light switches, a desk with a banker's lamp, plaques on every chest.
• Greenhouse corner: flower pots and planters by the window, a vase on each table, a little aquarium.
• Porch: a street lamp at the end of the path, a bench, a plaque with the name of the house.
• Observatory: a telescope by a big window, a single candle so your eyes get used to the dark, the Moon above.

Want to reuse a room you love? Save it as a blueprint at the architect's desk, and build it again anywhere on the planet. Decorating is even better with friends.