“Minecraft: Pocket Edition” beta v.0.13.0 along with the Redstone Circuits update is now available for android smartphones.

“It’s worth mentioning that all of these features are coming to ‘Minecraft: Pocket Edition’ and the ‘Minecraft Windows 10 Edition’ beta in the near future,” according to Mojang’s statement reported in Tech Times.

Mojang, the Minecraft game developer strongly suggests that players need to secure a backup of their existing worlds. There are three requirements a player needs to have to join the test; first, a player must have an android device capable of running the “Minecraft: Pocket Edition.”

Second, game must be purchased from the Google Play Store. Lastly, they need to navigate through the Minecraft: Pocket Edition Beta application to become a tester.

Once the player clicked the “become a tester” button on the application, the game will be installed automatically into the phone and will take several days to show up on the device.

The “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” along with the Redstone Circuit update includes the Redstone wire, levers, buttons, pressure plates, torch, lamp, tripwires, trapped chests and detector rails. There are also new wooden doors and a “cute fluffy crop-eating bunnies.” The Stonecutter feature is gone from the game, according to Mojang.

There are several modification within the game including a game tutorial for both reporting a bug and how to make an existing world back-up. The Redstone can be used to control trapdoors, doors, TNT and rails, also longer item tooltip visibility time, stack count labels has a bigger and more readable font and ghast and slimes have the ability to respawn in the game and a lot more listed in their website, vie the reads in Mojang.

The game developer offered their blog forum for the players to get updates about the game and future announcements for the “Minecraft: Pocket Edition,” according to Tech Times.

‘Minecraft: Pocket Edition’ Beta Version Now On Google Play Store; New Updates Included

Yes, finally! After all this time, we finally got the feature most of us have wanted to see in Minecraft: Pocket Edition [$6.99] for months now; the stonecutter is finally history! Okay, there’s also another relatively-important feature in 0.13 beta, Redstone Circuits! The truth is that usable redstone has been on the top of almost every MCPE player’s list since the game first came out on mobile, so I’m glad to see that we are almost there. According to the changelog, we are getting redstone wire, redstone torch, redstone lamp, levers, buttons, pressure plates, tripwires, trapped chests, and detector rails. As you can see from the changelog, we aren’t getting pistons, repeaters, and other advanced blocks, yet. According to the developers, those should be coming later on.

I’m not surprised at this omission because pistons have been known to be tricky little things to get right, so I’d rather get some redstone stuff now. In addition to redstone, we are getting cute crop-eating bunnies, new wooden doors, faster boats with different handling (finally!), slimes and ghasts now actually spawn, hunger restored by food items now matches the PC version, skeletons will run away from wolves, and a few more tweaks here and there. As is always the case, the beta is only out on Android at the moment, but recent updates have seen limited beta period, so I’m hoping it will hit iOS soon. If you want to join the beta, go here.

Let There be Light! – Minecraft: Pocket Edition: .13 (Redstone) Update is Out on Beta for Android

Minecraft: Console Editions are Getting Flatter, Woodier, Optionier!

Marriage is a tricky, tricky act, isn’t it? Quite often those joined in holy matrimony don’t really fit well together, and even when they do, compromises must abound if there is to be any kind of happiness in their new union. And when the marriage is of two very different people, the challenges are even greater. If you’ve played Minecraft (either the mobile or the PC version) and any of the Telltale games, then you already know why I started my review of Minecraft: Story Mode [$4.99] with these metaphors. When Telltale told the world that it would apply its narrative-based formula on Minecraft, the game that’s now synonymous with sandbox, many gamers wondered whether Telltale could pull it off and whether Minecraft players would bother with a developer that put their beloved open-world game in a narrative straight-jacket, possibly chopping off any parts that refused to obey the narrative techniques that Telltale has used in its other series.

What many didn’t consider was how Minecraft‘s Survival mode is often not an aimless wondering into an open world but, rather, a choose-your-own-adventure game written onto a blocky, endless world rather than the pages of a book. When you are dropped into the desolate (or very lightly inhabited) world at the start of every Minecraft Survival game, you make your own story by struggling to get shelter, gradually improve your living quarters, strive for better armor, better tools, and then set your own goals like “today I’m heading east to see what’s beyond that hill” or “tomorrow I’m spelunking in the hope of finding diamonds.” The experiences that come out of these little “missions” you set for yourself are nothing but stories, which is why this game has become so huge. Exploring a sandbox world really is like writing your own story.

So, I wasn’t surprised to discover that Telltale’s experiment works well and the blend that is Minecraft: Story Mode (almost an oxymoron in itself for many) is very fun and delivers a very entertaining experience that should satisfy even the skeptics among you. Sure, the options you’ll have in this version of the Minecraft universe pale before the freedom you have in other versions of the game, but it was still a lot of fun to experience someone’s else’s story in a universe where I often write my own stories. Minecraft: Story Mode oozes with the charm of its blocky inspiration while not allowing the original inspiration to restrain the narrative possibilities. Do keep in mind that Telltale still has some problems handling action scenes (although there’s an improvement from older Telltale games), and the interactivity is more limited than in other series. Still, I think Telltale has another winning series in its hands with Minecraft: Story Mode.

The game has numerous little touches that will definitely make long-time Minecraft players enjoy the game a bit more than the rest. Minecraft‘s distinct aesthetic carries over to Minecraft: Story Mode from as early as the opening screen and also in all the menus and even the fonts Telltale used. Those familiar with all the Minecraft Let’s Plays will enjoy how the opening screen sometimes plays out like a group building project in time-lapse, probably an ode to the many similar Let’s Plays that made the game as popular as it is now. The game even has short crafting moments, which I thought was a clever touch and another moment where the sandbox and the story-driven game meet.

The game’s music direction also tried to capture some of the magic of the original soundtrack, and while it sometimes almost gets it right, there are some jarring moments where instead of emphasizing the tension of a moment, it becomes a slightly irritating, repetitive soundtrack. The voice-overs, though, are top-notch with the likes of Patton Oswalt and the others delivering their lines convincingly and with a child-like tone that helps sell the game’s “teenage” timbre. The sound effects, including the famous wood-punching sound, are pretty spot-on too. Overall, the art and sound direction help transport the players into the Minecraft universe. Anyone who’s ever played any of the other versions of the game will probably get a smile on his or her face on more than one occasion; I did, quite often too. So, while overall the transition from sandbox to story-driven game works well, what about the first episode of the series, The Order of the Stone? How was the story, the characters, and the choices? In short, Episode 1 is a lot of fun and definitely worth playing but has a few issues. Now let’s talk about the episode in a bit more detail.

Episode 1: “The Order of the Stone”

I’ll try and avoid spoilers as much as I can, but keep in mind that you’ll probably be able to figure out the general plot of the first episode if you read this review. If you’ve watched movies like The Goonies back in the 80s and 90s, then you know what you are getting yourself into with The Order of the Stone. You play as Jesse (and you can be either male or female), the leader of a gang of misfits that has decided to blow everyone’s mind at the yearly Endercon, a clever reference to Minecon. I’ve seen some reviewers complain that we aren’t given any backstory on our characters and the world they inhabit, but I actually felt that this is appropriate to the Minecraft universe. After all, we have no idea how Steve ended up in the world of Minecraft in the other games of the franchise, so I was perfectly happy making up Jesse’s own backstory as I went along. Still, don’t mistake the lack of a backstory for any lack of pre-existing tension; the stakes are high in The Order of The Stone even before the world-is-ending plot begins.

Jesse and his group aren’t the most original characters – you have the big, strong, but slightly slow guy, the nerdy one, and so on, but what I did appreciate was the group’s diversity; you have strong male and female characters, and one of the most bad-ass characters in the story is female, which I felt was appropriate because Minecraft is a game with both male and female fans. Unlike in Telltale’s The Game of Thrones, you only play as one character in the first episode, but again, that made perfect sense in the context of the Minecraft universe where you are simply Steve.

The whole Endercon plotline is smart as it once more crosses the beams of the real Minecraft fandom and the game-world. The first-ever Minecon was a huge moment in the evolution of Minecraft and the moment that helped people who weren’t playing the game realize how huge the Minecraft community was. So, by starting the story with Endercon, Telltale points to Minecraft‘s growth and legacy while at the same time offering the best pressure-cooker of a situation for the story to take place. And, as you would expect, the stakes only get higher in the story, turning from the often-used “losers vs bullies” to “misfits vs world-ending threat.” You know, the usual 80s and 90s movie fare.

While I don’t want to spoil how the story unfolds at Endercon and beyond, I will say that overall the narrative thread makes sense without it being too predictable. I could see most of the twists coming, but since this is a game meant from ten and up, I wasn’t expecting the plot to surprise me too much. Still, the plot of the first episode was interesting enough to keep me going. While it did have the “losers save the world” backbone, it did enough to let the archetypes evolve and give players a story that is memorable enough to keep us waiting for the next episodes. The characters are predictable but fun, the enemies aren’t completely flat, and overall the story is entertaining.

What I didn’t enjoy as much is how Minecraft: Story Mode has fewer choices than other Telltale games (which aren’t known for their great degree of interactivity to begin with). For instance, you’ll pick one response to a question and then the conversation will continue for a couple of minutes without you having the ability to respond again. Because of the relatively-limited interactivity at quite a few moments in the game, you’ll often feel that you are watching characters interacting at length with each other without being a participant. Telltale’s decision to give players less “agency” than in other series might have to do with the expectation that the average age of this series’ players will be quite a bit lower than series like The Walking Dead. No matter what the reasoning behind the decision was, I think most players will have more than a few moments when they’ll want to participate in the conversation but won’t be able to.

Even with these limitations, the journey through the wonderfully-realized world of Minecraft is a pleasant one with plenty of variety in the landscapes and, as you’ve seen in the trailer, even a journey to hell (Nether) and back. The journey includes the usual assortment of quick-time events and even a few fights. While Telltale continues to improve those mechanics, you still get more than a few clunky action moments that use weird camera angles. I did enjoy fighting the various mobs though; you actually get to move and swing your sword in Minecraft: Story Mode. Most of the quick-time events were at reasonable moments in the story, but one issue that I did have was the hit boxes are occasionally so small that I literally didn’t see them, let alone tap them in time. Also, you’ll notice that many of the quick-time events are on the easy side when compared to other series, probably because of the expectation that younger players will play this game.

With all that said, you’ll enjoy The Order of the Stone since it has a solid and entertaining story and plenty of meaningful decisions that ensure quite different playthroughs. While I wish I had even more options to make (even small ones), I did feel that I had a say in where the story went, so as far as I’m concerned, Telltale’s mission was a success. If you like Minecraft, this episode will feel like revisiting an old friend. If you’ve never played Minecraft before, this series stands perfectly fine on its own, offering a fun world to explore and discover and an entertaining plot that should keep you coming back for more. So yes, I’m definitely coming back for more Minecraft: Story Mode.

Editor’s Note: Look for this review to be added to and the score (potentially) adjusted as new episodes are released.

‘Minecraft: Story Mode’ Review – This Oxymoron Actually Makes Sense

Sony revealed a new title at Paris Games Week today, and it’s releasing next year exclusively on PlayStation 4.

The game is Boundless, and although details were light during the reveal, it has clear Minecraft allusions, from the handheld tool in the character’s hand, to the blocky structures surrounding the bustling wildlife.

Portals to what looked like other worlds were also shown, and as the player stepped through one, the surroundings, and chromatic palettes, changed.

Not much other gameplay was shown before Sony cut to its next reveal, but Sony vice president of worldwide studios Europe Michael Denny did confirm a 2016 release date.

For more news coming out of Paris Games Week, and further news about Boundless, stay tuned to GameSpot.

Sony Reveals Minecraft-Like Exclusive Boundless

If you’ve been playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition [$6.99] since the big 0.12 update, you’re probably enjoying how the game is now closer to the PC version than ever before with all kinds of new features added and plenty others reworked. Still, the work doesn’t end here since the developers are currently working on the 0.13 update that should add working redstone circuits among other features. One new feature that we now know about is the addition of rabbits, one of the later additions to the PC version. However, these bunnies will be different than the ones in the PC version: they are smaller, will run away from you, can be one-shot with a bow, only spawn in forests, and they’ll eat your crops. Now, that last one is going to be…fun. I can see myself turning into an old geezer with a bow screaming at those bunnies to leave my crops alone.

In addition to the bunny addition, going by developer Tommasso Checchi’s twitter feed, the stonecutter might go the way of the dodo and there will probably be some changes to the UI since he feels there are issues with the UI in the mobile version (he doesn’t specify what issues). He’s also experimenting with dragging & dropping items in the toolbar. Mojang plans to have a live 0.13 developer stream tomorrow at 11:30 EST at its Twitch channel to talk about the upcoming update. They will be answering questions from here, so you still have time to go post some questions.

New Spoilers for ‘Minecraft: Pocket Edition’ 0.13 Update – Adding Rabbits and Probably Reworking the UI

Boo! Minecraft: Pocket Edition update is out!

Cube World was quite the indie darling back when it went on sale a few years ago. Long in development, which is understandable as the game is being made by just Wolfram von Funck and his wife Sarah von Funck, the game has been only intermittently available, and has received few updates along the way. All development seemed to stop back in July of 2013 though, with the game still up for sale until July 2015. After that Cube World was seemingly dead, receiving no updates, and not even remaining available to purchase.

That has ended though, with the developer tweeting out news that updates would be arriving, with hints of more to come. These aren’t major updates, not even touching gameplay mechanics, but they are the first signs of life of a game that was apparently long gone. The updates add extra music to the game, which you can already listen to on SoundCloud to get a taste for what is being added.

While this update doesn’t change much, it has sparked a resurgence in the community, with fans welcoming Funck back to the game and proclaiming an end to their long wait for updates. Many wonder if this is the start of a new chapter in Cube World history, with the possibility of more changes to come. Of course, Funck could just go back to not working on the game once again. Time will tell, but for now Cube World fans have hope where they used to have none.

Cube World is Back from the Dead, Receiving First Update in Over a Year

UPDATE: Developer 4J Studios has clarified that the Halloween Mash-Up pack will hit “all platforms”, so expect it on PS3, PS4, and PS Vita as well.

The annual Halloween Mash-Up pack is coming once again to Minecraft for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. This year’s edition features a bunch of fun and spooky items that players can use in their games. Just like other Mash-Up packs, players will have a pre-built world to play in, which uses all of the new textures and features. The Halloween Mash-Up pack hits Minecraft on October 23rd.

“Boo! It´s that time of year when ghouls and ghosts haunt your Minecraft creations. The Halloween Mash-up pack includes 43 terrifying character skins – vampires, mad scientists and other creepy crawlers. You´ll find a brand new world full of scary blocks and an eerie soundtrack that will make your heart skip a beat. So don´t be afraid and build your spooky worlds.”

Check out the trailer below to see this new world and all of its features in action. The player skins are probably going to be a big favorite for players, letting them cosplay as a ghost, vampire, or other traditional Halloween creatures. A haunted house seems to have been built, with different minecart tracks for players to run through and enjoy. You can then modify, destroy, or just build your own stuff around the world as you see fit.

Minecraft Halloween Mash-Up Adds Tons of Spooky Fun

Minecraft Launches Halloween Pack With Creepy Creatures and Loads of Spooky Fun

Minecraft is treak or treatin’ with its gamers by releasing a Halloween Mash-Up Pack this Friday and will be available on all consoles.

According to Playstation Lifestyle, the mash-up will include 43 terrifying skins, a freaky texture pack that you can use in other Minecraft worlds. It also comes with a new world that will scare you at your wit’s end.

The special edition pack will be sold at $3.99.

Xbox said that the skins will have a traditional Halloween theme with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bride of Frankenstein, Wicked Witch, Grim Reaper, Swam Monster, Tree Face, and Mad Doctor.

Best of all, you can download some of them for free!

There will be creepy blocks available that you can use for building and an eerie background music to keep you company and give you some goose bumps.

Players can cosplay as a vampire, ghost, or other old-school Halloween characters. There seems to be a haunted house that’s already built for players can explore. It uses all the new features and spooky skins.

But of course, you have the freedom to destroy, customize, and build your own structures as you deem fit. During this season, gamers are encouraged to build the scariest structure they could possibly imagine.

Pocket Edition and Windows 10 players will also get to experience the spooky Minecraft edition. Just stay tuned for Mojang’s update that will be posted on October 23.

Minecraft Halloween Mash-up Pack will be available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS Vita, PS3, and PS4.

WATCH: Minecraft Launches Halloween Pack With Creepy Creatures and Loads of Spooky Fun

Minecraft Update 1.9: Snapshot 15w43a, 15w43b Overhaul Loot Systems And Introduce Subtitles