The Swedish game developing studio Mojang announced on its official site the release of the latest mini game ‘Tumble.’ The add-on feature is readily available as part of the 1.33 update exclusively for consoles.
The move from Mojang is part of a new strategy to continuously provide new fun updates to the game as a way to keep engagement from its player base. It follows the release of the ‘Battle’ mini game back in June, and it precedes significant upcoming updates for Minecraft Pocket Edition, Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta and Minecraft Gear VR Edition.
Minecraft’s console version update also includes several patches and a new map pack for the ‘Battle’ mode. Three new maps are available on the Battle Map Pack 3: Castle, Invasion, and Shipyard. Players with a Season Pass in PlayStation consoles will get the new pack for free, while the rest will have to pay $2.99 if they want it.
Minecraft’s ‘Tumble’ honors a long-standing tradition in the cubic universe
Marsh Davies from Mojang wrote in a post on its official site that the main inspiration for the new ‘Tumble’ mini game was the community-created game ‘Spleef.’
For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, the popular phenomenon is an open-world game dubbed ‘sandbox’ concerning its genre due to its extremely liberal nature. The game has no particular goals or story to follow, although it features several gameplay modes and achievements that players can accomplish.
Early versions of Minecraft back in the Alpha and Beta testing phases in the late 00s were incredibly popular among a limited user base that had a knowledge of the game. This cult-like following gave birth to many of the features present in current versions of the title, including the in-game arena mode ‘Spleef’.
‘Spleef’ is a competitive game within Minecraft created by fans with even an established set of rules for the battles. The concept is simple: players must destroy the terrain blocks that make up the battlefield to make their opponents fall into a pit below it. Variations of the game exist in which using items or directly hitting players is also allowed to accomplish the objective.
‘Tumble’ mode is pretty much the same thing, except official and in predetermined maps developed by Mojang instead of fan-created. The new mini game features two variations: a directly offensive mode in which players use snowballs to attack each other, and a classic version that provides them with shovels to destroy the field blocks.
Up to 8 players can stand in a ‘Tumble’ platform and try their best to make other players fall into a hot lava lake in the console edition of Minecraft. The free update is currently available for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, with the Wii U scheduled to receive it later this week.
Source: Mojang