Minecraft is officially the best-selling video game of all time, so it was really only a matter of time before the franchise started to branch out. Apparently, developer Mojang agrees because an upcoming board game based on Minecraft was announced today called Minecraft: Builders & Biomes, which releases November 15, 2019.
The news came out during MineCon, an online live stream celebration of all things Minecraft hosted jointly between Mojang and Microsoft. While Microsoft put a good deal of focus on another upcoming Minecraft title—this one an augmented reality mobile title similar to Pokémon Go—called Minecraft Earth, it did explain a few things about Builders & Biomes.
Minecraft: Builders & Biomes is a tabletop game from Ravensburger, the German company also behind hit games such as Villainous and Labyrinth. Builders & Biomes will borrow elements from the original; according to the game’s press release, it “lets you explore the Overworld, mine rare resources, build fabulous structures, and collect weapons to defeat the mobs lurking around every corner.” Players are on a quest to score experience points for the structures they build and largest connected biomes on their player boards, which are comprised of forest, desert, mountain, or snowy tundra spaces. Once the game’s resource cube is totally depleted, the game ends, and whichever player has amassed the most points, wins.
This will be the first strategy board game in Minecraft’s more than 10-year history, and Ravensburger has stated that Builders & Biomes was developed in conjunction with Mojang to bring the digital experience to life. The board game is already available for pre-order, with a set release date rapidly approaching. In the meantime, Mojang and Microsoft have also revealed current plans to update the digital Minecraft, so there’s plenty to keep busy with until then.
It seems like Minecraft will be playable in pretty much any form before too long, as today’s MineCon focus was mainly set on Builders & Biomes and Minecraft Earth. Besides all that, cooperative-RPG Minecraft: Dungeons is also in development, set to arrive in 2020, and a Minecraft movie is even in the works with a release date in 2022.
Needless to say, fans of the rapidly evolving franchise have plenty to look forward to, all while the original game continues to draw in a massive amount of active players each month.
Minecraft is available to play on most platforms, while Builders & Biomes releases on November 15, 2019.
Source: Minecraft.net
