Standing out, rather refreshingly, from the newly revealed line-up of zombie games, racers and shooters set to be making their way to Microsoft's latest console, the Xbox One, is the newly announced Xbox One Edition of super popular indie title Minecraft. The original game, released by Swedish developers Mojang on PC quickly became a runaway success, spawning a mobile version for tablets and smartphones, as well as a dedicated, and equally popular iteration on the Xbox 360. This new incarnation for the Xbox One is set to be based on the 360 version, but will have exclusive new features to take advantage of the new console's extra power.
For those not in the know, Minecraft is an open world game that sees you planted squarely in the middle of a randomised environment, where it's up to you to modify and interact with it as you see fit. The whole Minecraft world is made up of individual blocks, and you can choose to build more, or destroy them as you see fit, as you mine for different materials to use in your constructions. The game may look simple, but there's actually a huge amount of depth here, leading it to gain a devoted and creative following of budding builders online. A quick Google search is all it takes to show up some astonishing examples of structures people have spent hundreds of hours, or even months of their lives crafting out of the blocks, from cities, to game worlds, and even Minecraft 'roller coasters' based on movies like 'Ghostbusters' and 'Beetlejuice' (imagine a working ghost train built entirely out of pixelated bricks). It's like being given a huge box of virtual Lego bricks and being told to build and play however you like, and the game has become a great outlet for players' creativity, similar to user-created levels in games like LittleBigPlanet. In fact, Minecraft has become so popular that there's even been an official Lego set produced. Not bad for an indie game originally created by just one programmer, Markus 'Notch' Persson.
The Xbox. It beckons you forth.
So what's new in the Xbox One Edition? Well, the brief trailer promises 'Bigger Worlds! Bigger Multiplayer! More Minecraft!' and that's about all we know so far! The worlds will certainly be bigger than those in the Xbox 360 version, thanks to the increased power of the new Xbox One, but we don't know yet whether they will be equal to the truly huge maps available in the PC original. One thing that hasn't changed is the graphics, which retain their blocky charm, keeping that building brick aesthetic intact. While we're currently not sure if the Xbox One Edition will offer enough exclusive features to make it definitive - after all the PC version is still available and runs well on pretty much any setup - more details are set to be released in the coming days, so we should have more idea soon about what makes the Xbox One's very own Minecraft special. It's always a pleasure to see a game that's focused so purely on play and creativity rather than hyper-realistic graphics (particularly one for a system capable of very impressive visuals), and it seems like Minecraft: Xbox One Edition could be a great fit for players looking for something a bit different from Microsoft's latest console.
