Alternatives

Normally I tend to frown on trend-chasers in the gaming industry.  Copycats of the Dark Souls formula, battle royal clones, and a whole slew of open-world games are just a few examples.  Having said that, I kind of have a soft spot for Vintage Story.  Calling it a Minecraft knockoff would be an understatement.  The game has the same block building and 3-by-3 crafting system.  I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise considering that developers made mods for Minecraft before they began work on their own game.  Where Vintage Story differs though is in how it approaches the survival genre.  

Overall, Vintage Story is less eclectic than Minecraft.  This is especially obvious in the visuals which have a more grounded look to them.  It also focuses more on sub-systems.  For example making stone tools involves a mini-puzzle game wherein the player has to chip off tiny blocks from a slab of rock in order to form the shape needed for the tool they want to create.  A similar mechanic exists for blacksmithing and pottery making.  Smelting ore requires the player to take note of melting point temperatures for specific materials and feed the fire with a suitable fuel source (whether it be wood, peat, charcoal or coal).  In this way the game creates a much more well defined progression from stone to copper to bronze, and finally iron.  

There is a wide variety of ways to prepare food.  The game also keeps track of the kinds of things the player's character eats.  Maintaining a balanced diet can increase the maximum HP the player has.  Food will also spoil eventually, though there are a number of ways the player can increase shelf-life (based on factors like the method of preparation and where the food is stored).  Growing crops is a bit different too, in that soil can become depleted.  This, in turn, necessitates crop rotation or fertilization from time to time.  Some of these features might sound like busywork.  Indeed, when I first heard about them I was a bit turned off.  However, in practice, they enhance the experience by giving the player an in-game incentive to do a wide variety of things such as building a cellar, rearranging their crop fields and stockpile food for winter (yes, there are seasons and yes, they affect food availability).  Later in the game, it's possible to automate a number of processes by constructing windmills and simple machinery.  

Wildlife is somewhat similar to Minecraft, but again there's more going on.  Fauna have more complex behavioral patterns.  Hunting is a much more challenging proposition in that animals will fight back or run when attacked.  As Paul Sores Jr. (of Youtube fame) found out, intrusive rabbits can cause considerable damage to a vegetable garden.  Domesticating a particular species requires raising several generations in captivity.  Instead of skeletons, zombies, creepers and spiders, there are several kinds of "Drifters", unfriendly demi-humans who live in caves and tend to appear out on the surface only at night...or during storms.  Honestly, they remind me a lot of the Morlocks from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine", but I digress...

Vintage Story also has a sanity mechanic that is still under development, but seems to be leaning toward supernatural horror.  Where the devs end up going with the story is anyone's guess.  Let's hope it's something memorable.