Notch reveals: Mass Effect April Fool is really a new game

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Far-future space sim 0x10c will be “quite ambitious,” promises Mojang founder

If you spent all of Sunday hiding from April 1's annual barrage of falsehood, japery and good old-fashioned made-up crap, you'll have missed the debut of Mars Effect, an obsessive-sounding sci-fi concoction posing as the new game from Minecraft heart-throb “Notch” Persson. So now you're all caught up on Notch's April Fool, the Swedish trickster's about ready to meta-fool you with the announcement that Mars Effect really is his next project, albeit without that difficult name. No, this game's got a whole new, arguably even more difficult name!

Features promised for the title so far include hard science fiction, “lots of engineering,” an advanced economy system, space battles, and a fully-working 16-bit computer front-end for tinkering by programming-savvy players. This “can be used to control your entire ship,” says Notch, “or just to play games on while waiting for a large mining operation to finish.”

Persson says the game's “still very early in development,” but hopes to adopt a Minecraft-esque, player-driven development model. The finished game will likely run on a subscription system, says Notch, necessary to power the game's substantial persistent backend. Jump on Gmail Tap and spread the news!

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