Minecraft Story Mode – Game-Play Interview (Episode 1-5 Titles, Play Roster, Menus)

Developer talks about Minecraft Story Mode characters, plot, voice acting and the first five episodes:
1. The Order of the Stone
2. Assembly Required
3. The Last Place you Look
4. A Block and a Hard Place
5. Order Up!

We also have a look at the menus and controls for the game to see which options are configurable.

Finally there is a look at the full 6 player character roster (3 female and 3 male) from the beginning of the game.

Minecraft Story Mode – Suitable for Over 12s (PEGI 12+)

Here’s our complete guide to Minecraft Story Mode Episode 1 The Order of the Stone. The game will be coming to Xbox, PlayStation, Wii U, iOS, Android, PC and Mac.

1. Genre

Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic adventure game in five parts.

It tells a story based in the well-known world of Minecraft. As a female or male character called Jesse, players solve puzzles, fight zombies, and talk to other characters to progress the story. Conversations involve choosing from multiple potential responses that each have consequences for the story and relationships in the game. Action is played out with quick-time events.

While Minecraft: Story Mode is visually similar to Minecraft itself, it plays more like other episodic adventure games from the developer, Telltale Games, like The Walking Dead.

2. Story
The story revolves around Jesse and their group of friends, who want to find a group of four adventurers called The Order of the Stone, who have slayed an Ender Dragon, in order to save the world from oblivion. Each member of the Order is the best at what they do, and represents a different kind of Minecraft player: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Grief-er, and Architect.

3. Developer
Developer Telltale Games is known for these episodic adventure games, like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones games. Minecraft: Story Mode is more family-friendly, like their Back to the Future game.

4. Format
Minecraft: Story Mode is available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360, and iOS and Android. It will also be coming to Wii U in the near future. A Vita version is likely but unconfirmed.

Although unconfirmed this is likely to cost around £4/$5 per episode or £20/$25 for the whole season. There will also be a retail season pass disc for consoles that is scheduled to be released on the launch day of episode 1 for £24/$30.

5. Duration and Difficulty
Each episode tells a self-contained story as part of the larger whole of the series, and each is a couple of hours long.

Although the focus is on narrative, some decisions and action moments have time limits that may leave younger players unable to choose a response in time, in which case a “no response” action is triggered.

6. UK Rating
In the UK and Europe, PEGI rates Minecraft: Story Mode as only appropriate for those aged 12 and older for “mild bad language”.
http://www.pegi.info/en/index/global_id/505/?searchString=minecraft+story+mode

The GRA expands on its PEGI rating by explaining that the game has “frequent use of mild language” including words like “ass”, “crap”, and “piss”.
http://gamesratingauthority.org/GRA/

7. Other Ratings
Not yet rated

8. Themes
Although Minecraft itself is aimed at younger players PEGI 7+ the Story Mode adventure looks to engage an older audience with its controversial PEGI 12+ rating. Although the rating is mainly from language in the game, it also includes suspense moments and jump scares that may unsettle younger players. Zombies and spiders attack characters including a helpless friendly pig.

Positively, Minecraft Story Mode engages with themes of friendship, survival and creativity. With professional voice acting and musical score there is considerable substance to the experience.

The developers aimed to combine the feel of The Goonies, Ghostbusters and Pixar films. The resulting adventure is appropriate for a similar aged audience.

9. Why people play:

Minecraft is an incredibly popular game, and different people play it for different reasons. Players who have an emotional attachment to the world of Minecraft will enjoy the opportunity to experience a story based in that world.

Adult Minecraft? Meet “The Tomorrow Children” PS4 with Q-Games CEO

We caught up with CEO of Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert to play through some of his upcoming multi-player game The Tomorrow Children. It combines Minecraft, Terraria, Animal Crossing and politics.

The Tomorrow Children combines Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Marxist philosophy to create an open-world experience to appeal to grown-ups as well as children.

As you can tell from my introduction this is not your everyday video-game. The Tomorrow Children is an open world experience developed by Q-Games, makers of the PixelJunk franchise, published by Sony Computer Entertainmen

On my radar since its official announced at last Gamescom I sat down with CEO of Q-Games Dylan Cuthbert, to find out more about the game and the philosophy behind it.

https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/games/the-tomorrow-children-ps4/

LEGO Worlds – Plastic Minecraft Out Now on Steam

We take a look at the new Lego Worlds game on STEAM Early Access. This takes a Minecraft style open world environment and turns brick builders loose.

Hot on the heels of LEGO Dimensions comes another long expected innovation from the house of brick, LEGO Minecraft. Or as it will be called LEGO Worlds.

Once generated, as with Minecraft, you are free to manipulate and dynamically populate with LEGO to your hearts content. As players progress and explore each World they can unlock new themes and abilities ranging from cowboys and giraffes to vampires and polar bears, to steamrollers, race cars, and colossal digging machines!

A range of environment shaping tools enable colossal building tasks to be achieved. Raise terrain to create huge mountains or piece together intricate constructions brick-by-brick.

Future features have been listed as Underground Cave Networks, More Biomes, Pre-Generated Towns, Red Brick Extras, liquid behaviors, Cut/Copy/Paste chunks of landscape and Underwater Gameplay.

This is another interesting move from LEGO, Warner and TT Games and time will tell whether it can make in roads to the Minecraft obsession.

LEGO Dimensions: Elves & Minecraft – Toys to Life Interview (Part 2 of 2)

Before Dimensions was announced we talked to Soren Laursen, President of Lego for Americas about Lego’s strategy in the video-game space. In particular we looked at LEGO Elves and LEGO Minecraft as potential video-game cross-overs. In Elves we see a LEGO Dimensions style portal in the toy — maybe a hint that it will be … Continue reading LEGO Dimensions: Elves & Minecraft – Toys to Life Interview (Part 2 of 2)