Minecraft 1.20 is officially called the Trails & Tales update, and nobody's sure why

After months of waiting, Minecraft 1.20 has a name, but nobody seems sure why this one is going to be called the Trails & Tales update.

Trails & Tales is set to introduce new features like archaeology, a cherry blossom biome with pink wood, an armor customization system, and the new fan-voted mob, the Sniffer. It's also got customizable signs, bookshelves, bamboo crafting, and perhaps most importantly, "graceful, grumpy" camels. It's a fairly small collection of features for a named update, but hey, they're free additions for a game you probably bought a decade ago.

You might notice that there's a distinct lack of anything resembling a trail or a tale in that list of features, though. "I think 'random shit' would have been a more fitting name, but hey ho," as one Reddit user puts it. "Yep. That definitely is a name," says another. "What trails? Seriously, what trails? You can maybe argue for tales with the pots and bookcase," yet another fan generously offers.

The response to the name hasn't been overwhelmingly negative or anything - after all, it's just meant to be something a bit catchier than 'Minecraft 1.20' - but it seems developer Mojang is using some more creative thinking to justify Trails & Tales.

"The 1.20 update is all about self expression," game director Agnes Larsson says in the announcement blog, "specifically self expression through representation, story telling, and world building. And, it’s the journey - your trails - that ties it all together. The Minecraft worlds belong to the players - and so do the stories, or tales, about those worlds."

Look, I dunno, Caves & Cliffs just had literal caves and cliffs. The caves weren't metaphorical. In any case, all the features announced for Trails & Tales are currently available to try out in various snapshots and betas. No official release date has yet been announced, but big Minecraft updates tend to launch in late spring or early summer, so fans are expecting a launch around June.

If you're looking for more games like Minecraft, we've got a big list of great ones to help you out.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.