Mojang has just released the next highly-anticipated update to the Minecraft universe, and already the company has given us something more to look forward to. As it turns out, in addition to the new The Wild Update, Minecraft may be getting a real-time strategy spin-off soon, according to the co-founder of Giant Bomb, Jeff Gerstmann. After 14 years at Giant Bomb, Gerstmann recently left the site, and in a Twitch stream addressing his post-Giant Bomb plans, he mentioned Mojang’s alleged exploration into RTS gaming.
‘There’s a new Minecraft spin-off in the works; Microsoft appears to be testing it out and putting it out under a codename and all that basic stuff.’ Now, Gerstmann doesn’t just claim to be aware of the existence of the project by word of mouth; he also claims to have seen screenshots of what the alleged new project looks like in its current form. ‘it seems like it’s a real-time strategy game, an RTS of sorts.’
According to Gerstmann, the new spin-off, which doesn’t have a name as yet, will see players taking control of a ‘Steve-esque unit.’ Players will then order other units around to eliminate factions of enemy units such as Piglins. Gerstmann says that the game will take place in a third-person perspective and is planned to have some kind of story and cutscenes. He did, however, add that the story elements and cinematic cutscenes appear far from finished at this stage.
As for when we could potentially see this new game launch, Gerstmann remains unsure. He is, however, willing to speculate based on what he’s seen: ‘It’s far enough along that perhaps it’s something that Microsoft will be announcing (the game) sometime over the next week or so here. But who the hell knows? I don’t know what their plans are for it, I just kind of saw the screens and got a rough breakdown of what it looked like.’
The idea of Minecraft, a classic sandbox game that has proven time and again that the only limit to what you can achieve is how big you can dream, being turned into a real-time strategy experience may be controversial but not too far-fetched. We’ve already seen the massively popular title attributed to an exciting dungeon crawler in the form of Minecraft: Dungeons. The only limit to what Minecraft could become seems to be how big the developers can dream. And by the sounds of things, there are massive dreams in the works.
In other Minecraft news, Rovio’s Angry Birds have dropped into Steve’s blocky world in the form of brand-new DLC! Get it now from the Marketplace!
