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Way back before Microsoft was shuttering game studios, canceling long-awaited projects, and laying off developers by the thousands, the optimistic among us had some hope that Xbox's acquisition spree would mean that we'd get some wild crossovers between beloved studios and the company's increasingly vast IP library. Maybe we'd get Double Fine's Banjo-Kazooie? id Software's StarCraft: Ghost revival? Obsidian finally getting the chance to make Fallout: New Vegas 2?
None of that ended up happening, of course, but what we are getting is Minecraft Blast, a mobile game built in collaboration between Mojang and Candy Crush developer King, which came under the Microsoft umbrella as part of the Activision Blizzard acquisition. As is often the case for mobile titles, this one quietly launched in a single test market – Malaysia – and the only info we have comes from a small official FAQ.
Minecraft Blast is a free-to-play game that will "combine modern match puzzle gameplay with ever-evolving scenarios set in a Minecraft-themed world. The game will offer quick, easy to jump-in-and-play sessions plus the ability to unlock and build imaginative Minecraft-style spaces."
You'd think it would be fairly easy to make sense of the rules of a mobile puzzle game from a handful of screenshots, but I can't really make heads or tails of what's going on in the preview images. There's a tile grid with a bunch of zombies, items, and blocks of various types, and a move counter suggesting you'll have a limited number of turns to complete your ultimate goal. More concerning is the main menu screen with what appears to be a premium currency and an energy counter, but hey, that's par for the free-to-play mobile course.
Minecraft Blast is still in playtesting, and invites are "time-limited, up to a week or two, to gather early feedback and refine the experience before broader release." It's currently only available on iOS, but the devs "hope to include more mobile platforms with future playtests," and say that "more regions will be included down the road."
