Mojang is allegedly developing a real-time strategy spin-off of Minecraft, according to Giant Bomb co-founder Jeff Gerstmann.
Gerstmann, who recently left the site after 14 years, took to Twitch to discuss his future post-Giant Bomb and all things videogames. As shared on ResetEra, around an hour into the five-hour stream Gerstmann briefly goes over the project and what he's seen of it so far. "There's a new Minecraft spin-off in the works," he began. "Microsoft appears to be testing it out and putting it out under a codename and all that basic stuff." He also said he'd seen screenshots of the game, adding "it seems like it's a real-time strategy game, an RTS of sorts."
Apparently, the unnamed spin-off will have players controlling a "Steve-esque unit," ordering units around from a third-person perspective to take down enemy factions like Piglins. Gerstmann added that there will also be some semblance of a story and cutscenes, though he said that those appear largely unfinished right now.
Whether it's something we'll be seeing at the upcoming Xbox showcase on June 12, Gerstmann was unsure. "It's far enough along that perhaps it's something that Microsoft will be announcing sometime over the next week or so here," he said. "But who the hell knows? I don't know what their plans are for it, I just kind of saw the screens and got a rough breakdown of what it looked like."
It's not totally wild to assume Mojang is playing around with slotting Minecraft into different genres—dungeon crawler spin-off Minecraft: Dungeons was pretty successful, garnering a very respectable score of 75 from Rachel Watts in her review. That game's co-developer, Double Eleven, has been recruiting for an RTS game of a "major IP" too, further increasing the likelihood of the game's existence. As always though, it's best to take rumours with a pinch of salt until we see official announcements.
Technically, this isn't entirely the first concept of a Minecraft RTS, either. Brendan Sullivan created a fantastic-looking prototype as part of an art test when applying for Mojang back in 2019. He got the job, which is no surprise when you look at how neat the entire thing is. If a Minecraft RTS looked like this, I wouldn't be mad about it.
