Infiniminer was originally intended to be played as a team-based competitive game, where the goal is to locate and excavate precious materials such as gold and diamonds, and bring the findings to the surface to earn points for one's team, until the winning team reaches a certain amount of points. The maps are limited in size, and walking off the edge or digging through the bottom causes the player to fall into the void and die. The sky is perpetually dark, and the landscape is made up entirely of bare dirt, stone, ores, and lava blocks which flow similarly to liquids in Minecraft classic. Players and tools are represented by flat sprites rather than three-dimensional objects. Many building blocks are team-colored, and most exist to serve a specific function rather than being purely decorative. Each class has their own set of abilities, tools, and blocks they can build with, with each costing a certain amount of metal ore to place. Players can play on one of two teams, Red or Blue, as one of four classes: Miner, Prospector, Engineer, or Sapper. Like Minecraft, Infiniminer is a block-based mining and construction game.

It quickly garnered a following on message boards around the internet, and inspired Notch to start working on Minecraft shortly after it was discontinued. Infiniminer was developed by Zach Barth of Zachtronics Industries with the help of his friend Chris Gengler in their spare time, and released in steps of incremental updates during late April and early May of 2009.

Team fortress 2 maps minecraft