Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We mentioned earlier that Tim Schafer would love to make a Pyschonauts 2, but can’t get the funding. Well, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson spotted our story and suggested to Schafer that they should work together to make it happen. Multimillionaire Persson clearly has the funds to do this, and everyone in the world with their brain in the right place wants to see a sequel to one of the most joyful games of all time, so this is a thing that might actually happen.

Clearly at the moment this is a tweeted offer, not a signed contract, but it’s a massively exciting one. Tim, say yes!

So then. I suspect the needle of Minecraft cuteness has swung way too far to the “d’aww” end of the meter with the introduction of tameable, breedable ocelots (which you can see emitting clouds of love-hearts in the video below.) This is a game with zombies and suicide-explosion beasts in! I demand more sinister threat. And I believe that it is only sensible, because horrors lurking outside our castles only make the cute, homely stuff cuter and more homely. Right, minerfolk?
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Mojang’s block-building and survival game is somehow making do with a mere twenty million users, they revealed recently. (20,127,16. No, wait, 20,127,17. I mean 20,127,18. I mean 20,127,19. Oh, you get the picture). 20 million? Pathetic. Chump change. I don’t know how they manage to stay afloat – I mean, all those Facebook game companies talk about having 180 million users or something like that, so that’s what Mojang should be aiming for. And yes, I’m completely sure those Facebook figures don’t actually mean “people who installed the game to their account, looked once then never came back because it was so boring” or “people who load it once a month because they clicked on the icon by mistake” or “people who played for about a week, until they realised it was a basically a scam that wanted them to to spend real money just to keep playing for longer than 17 seconds.” Yessir, those 180 million GenericVille users are real, daily, paying users, each and every one.
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This could be the year that Mojang stops meaning Minecraft and nothing but Minecraft. In an interview with Edge, CEO Carl Manneh says that there are two games in development that will be announced and possibly even be released as early as the first half of 2012. Minecraft creator Notch is working on one of these titles, having stepped back from lead development of his blocky baby. By my calculations – and keep in mind I haven’t checked in some time – it’s the first half of 2012 right now so that’s very exciting indeed. There is mention of a third title in the works, although that seems to be a more distant promise. Despite being released last year, Minecraft isn’t done either, far from it in fact. Update 1.1 landed yesterday and while I could tell you what it adds,there’s a funny video to do that for me.

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Another cuboid/voxel/block post! The blue birds of Twitter inform me that Mojang have hired Wollay, the chap working on Cube World. Notch claims that: “Our current plan is to plug his brain directly to a keyboard and sell whatever comes out.” Quests and other RPG features perhaps? There’s no word from Wollay himself yet (edit: he is ‘so excited’!) but Notch assures that development on Cube World will continue and it will remain an independent game. This potential centralisation of talent vaguely reminds me of Valve casting their sights on Turtle Rock and Nuclear Monkey. Let’s hope for good results and that the keyboard-brain interface doesn’t cause infections.

Mojang’s first foray into the world of being a publisher is about to happen. As developers OxEye told us back in August, Cobalt, the running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring-em-up was always aiming for its first public alpha to appear before the end of the year. And that, according to the EDGEBORG, is going to be this Friday, so long as Mojang can “tie up a few loose ends”. So, it may yet slip, but it’s clearly going to be soon.

You know how Minecraft is a bit like the world’s biggest and most elaborate Lego set? Except here you start with more green and brown blocks than even Simon Lego himself owns. Well, monolithic megacorp, Mojang, are discussing a deal with the Danish blockmasters to release official Minecraft Lego. They are only next door to the Swedish devs, after all. The news comes via Mojang bod Daniel Kaplan’s Twitter feed, who reports that they’ve gotten past the first stage of Lego’s peculiar means of developing specific themed packs. Via LEGO CUUSOO, someone’s idea for a Lego set appears in a Kickstarter-style site, except here all people are pledging is their support for the idea. Get to 10,000 votes and the idea gets looked at by Lego. And now Kaplan reports they are now chatting with Mojang about the prospect.

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How do you take a break from a project that seems like it will never be finished? It’s a tough question that we newshounds ask ourselves every day and it appears Notch has been having similar thoughts. Now that Minecraft has been officially released, its creator is taking a step back, leaving co-developer Jens Bergensten to take the reins. As for Notch, he’ll be resting, helping out with Minecraft and starting work on a new project. Released or not, Minecraft isn’t finished, so read on for a quick look at the current state of play and then read further to find out about the loveliest Minecraft story I’ve seen all year.

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We mentioned this on the podcast yesterday, and it’s well worth a look. People’s capability with an on-off switch is utterly terrifying, and this creation from the Redstone Development Foundation (brilliant name) is the most impressive I’ve seen. Before Minecraft, creator Markus ‘Notch’ Perrson made a game for a Ludam Dare competition called Prelude Of The Chambered, a super-simplified Dungeon Master-style first-person game. And the RDF, and one Berick Cook, have recreated a wire-frame version of it in Minecraft. Which is meta, as well as bloody impressive.

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Minecraft is, hilariously enough, due for release next week. The game that we’ve all been playing for the last two years will finally be granted its version 1.0 tag, but those dedicated four million who already own it can try out a near-complete version right now. Mojang have slipped out a pre-release build of version 0.9, including the fabled boss fight. That boss is, of course, an Ender dragon. Dragons are proper cool these days, see. It’s like Anne McCaffrey never happened.

Try the early build here. All that’s left from hereon in is polish and bug-squashing, apparently. Hmm, does this mean we need to do a ‘Wot I Think: Minecraft’? That seems far too weird, somehow. It’d be like running ‘Wot I Think: Breathing.’