The Minecraft 1.8 update was supposed to add more of a sense of adventure to one of the worldâs most popular computer games. Itâs adding more than that.
Itâs adding so much more, in fact, that itâs probably going to split into two updates, 1.8 and 1.9.
I got a demo of the new content at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle from the man behind Minecraft, the ever-friendly Markus âNotchâ Persson, who powered up his Notchbook Air and gave me a tour. We were only interrupted by Notch fans three times!
Among the new features he showed (all of which are in the video here) are:
A revised health system that makes health regenerate so long as your character has food.
A new bow-and-arrow.
Slightly more complex combat
Improved user control over lighting
An expanded world-creator mode
Many people think of Minecraft as a world-building game, a wonderful se of virtual building bocks that people use to construct extraordinary interactive landscapes. The 1.8 âadventureâ update, however, is supposed to give players more of a reason to keep playing. Notch has said that people get hooked by the immediate goal of surviving their first night in the hostile Minecraft world he has created, but he wants there to be more goals beyond that. As he explains in the video, he wonât be adding a complicated story to the game, but there will be some basic quest goals, similar, he says, to what you might get in a Rogue-like.
Take a look at the video for the full run-through. While Notch admits this update has gotten too big to go live all at once, he hopes to have both halves of it updated shortly after he gets home from PAXâand only once he can also get to a mysterious top-secret project. (Note: the âCarlâ he refers to in the video is his colleague at his studio, Mojang.)
Enjoy the video, folks.
You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
