Minecraft offers an open world sandbox allowing the player to do whatever they want through different in-game gamemodes such as, Survival, Creative and Adventure
The survival gamemode allows the player to wander around the world with some risk, getting hit to much may cause the player to die losing all of the players stuff.
The creative gamemode allows the player to fly around, get any block they want, break any block they want, become immune to damage and be more, creative.
The adventure gamemode works much like survival except you can't break, or place blocks allowing a more difficult and realistic challenge.