Mojang Stealth Releases New Game

For most people Friday is the start of their weekend, so you were probably focused on pretending to work while excitedly watching the clock slowly tick towards freedom. Because of that, you probably didn’t notice that Mojang, developers of the Minecraft phenomenon, went ahead and sneaked out a new game, Crown and Council. The announcement was posted on their blog.

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The game marks Mojang’s first Steam release and was developed solely by Henrik Pettersson as part of a game jam. Crown and Council is available right now, for free on Steam for Windows. A simple strategy game which seems to borrow heavily from Risk, where you spend resources to build up armies on your tiles, which you use to attack (and defend attacks from) opposing forces on adjacent tiles, with the end goal of world domination. Complete with endearing pixel art, an easy to digest , colorful map and nostalgia-inducing sound effects.

It’s simple to play but simple doesn’t mean easy, and there is replayability here with procedurally generated maps and insults from your rival tyrants. There’s some nice tug-of-war gameplay to be had here and since it’s free there’s really no reason to check it out.

Other features include fabulously mustachioed pixel-art tyrants, procedural land generation and procedural insults from your regal rivals. Have that, No Man’s Sky.

Although it’s the work of a sole developer, it’s nice to see the Mojang name attached to it as they undoubtedly want to show off that that they’re still working at being creative after the success of Minecraft. Their other titles Scrolls and Cobalt, seem to have fallen somewhat flat in comparison to their big brother. I don’t expect Crown and Council to take the conquer Minecraft, not by a long shot, but it’s always nice to see pet projects getting published.

An interesting Friday. Maybe this Friday we’ll see The Last Guardian finally make an appearance.