In Australia from my experience "not bad" = "good", "pretty good" = "amazing", "bit shit" = "really shit".
I don't think its as much that everything positive is just a non-negative, but that everything (especially emotions) is shifted towards the medium. Maybe it comes from a desire to not be abrasive and always soften everything, but I'm not sure.
I think it would be a worse game by quite a lot. Most of the "fun" moments in minecraft come from the stories of moving back and forth between your home and your mine for example. If there was no constraint the only thing stopping you from mining as much as you would ever need is your boredom.
I have been making a micro-arcade of one button games using a fun little library I found.
It is so fun to just have an idea and implement it in under an hour or two. It is a great creative outlet.
Give them a play if you have a second, they are very rough around the edges but are playable on mobile or browser.
https://micro-arcade.netlify.app/