Microsoft this weekend teased the latest entry in its Minecraft franchise: Minecraft Legends.
Co-developed by Blackbird Interactive—the studio behind Homeworld 3 and Hardspace: Shipbreaker—Minecraft Legends is an action strategy title set to be released in 2023, Microsoft announced during Sunday's Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase.
"Blackbird Interactive [is] a development team with a long track record of delivering strong strategy gameplay experiences," says Dennis Ries, Minecraft Legends Executive Producer.
The game sees players defending the Overworld from a "piglin" invasion that threatens to corrupt their home. They will need to build up their defenses, make friends, and build alliances in order to stop the world from ending.
Online campaign co-op and competitive multiplayer will be part of the game; look for more details on that later this year. "The game will have a very exciting campaign that will introduce many surprises for both new and seasoned Minecraft player alike," Ries says.
This isn't the first time Minecraft has experimented with other gaming genres. In 2015, Minecraft: Story Mode, an episodic point-and-click title, was released in partnership with Telltale Games. The diablo-like dungeon crawler Minecraft Dungeons was also released in 2020, though both titles received mixed reviews.
Minecraft, a block-based sandbox video game, dates back to 2009. The company behind it, Mojang, was acquired by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion; as of October 2021, Minecraft had 140 million monthly players.