Markus “Notch” Persson, the enigmatic creator of Minecraft, has once again stirred the gaming industry. In a recent series of tweets, Notch declared he ‘basically’ announced Minecraft 2 and intends to make a spiritual successor to the popular crafting game. “100% serious about all that, btw,” he wrote on X. The post garnered 4.4 million views with 1,100 reposts and 54,000 likes.
This unexpected statement started when Notch made an X poll, asking his followers whether his team should make a dungeon crawler or a Minecraft 2. The former is his passion project, which mixes traditional roguelike similar to Nethack and classic tile-based dungeon crawler like Grimrock. He described the project, called Uncursing Potions, as, “Kinda feels like Stardew Valley, but more diagonal door kicking.”
Unsurprisingly, the result was clear. 198,487 people, at the time of writing, would rather Notch work on another crafting game. Still, no hard feelings; he mentioned he’s happy ‘to oblige either’ and take the Minecraft 2 cash.
Fans immediately flooded the social media announcement with reactions and questions. “If you made a ‘Minecraft 2’ would you be able to continue the lore of the first game?” asked @flopppppzer12. Notch immediately replied that the game will establish new lore as set dressing and won’t be narrative-based like Story Mode. He also emphasizes that he’ll try his hardest to make a spiritual successor that ‘lives up to the fanstalgia.’
After all, Notch fully understands that straight-up calling his new game Minecraft 2 would be ‘super illegal.’ But the Swedish programmer would be onboard if Microsoft wanted to work with him for ‘some inane reason.’ “If that’s actually what people want, I would LOVE to make that game,” he wrote. “It’d be my Gremlins 2.”
This surprise announcement comes over a decade after Microsoft acquired Mojang along with Minecraft, for a staggering $2.5 billion in 2014. While Mojang expanded Minecraft into a multimedia juggernaut — for better or worse according to long-time fans — Notch has largely kept a low profile.
Since the buyout, the billionaire often mulls on social media what kind of game projects he should work on. Only in April 2024 did he finally reveal Bitshift Studio, his new team, and WIP screenshots of a game named Lever and Chests.
Minecraft 2 might sound redundant, especially considering the infinite replayability of Minecraft. But some Minecraft purists, which do exist, believe that the current game has become feature-creeped and lost its old charm. That’s why other similar games like Cube World and Infiniminer or even specific old Java builds are still popular among the player base.
A true Minecraft 2, crafted by Notch himself though? It would fill a void that no other mining game could hope to dig into.
