Notch Adds Terrifying Enderman Mob in Upcoming 'Minecraft' Update

Jul 30, 2011 by Riley Little

Minecraft Adds New Mob Called the Endermen

The indie smash-hit Minecraft is one of the most popular games around, and the creatures in the game – such as the Creeper – have reached a near-iconic level of fame. While Minecraft‘s original mob was enjoyed by many, it’s always nice to see new animals and monsters added to the equation.

Since the game’s release both squids and wolves have been added, but now Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has announced that a new mob called the Endermen will soon be found wandering the blocky countryside.

Notch detailed the appearance and function of the new Endermen creature on his blog The Word of Notch, stating that “it’s dark, it has long and narrow limbs, moves very slowly, and will pick up blocks and move them around.” The creature is humanoid in appearance, but apparently it’s the furthest thing in the world from friendly. According to Notch, these things will kill players just for looking at them, so any helpless players who are galavanting around should take precautions to avoid getting into a stare down with the beast.

If it wasn’t already very obvious, the Endermen were designed with the intention of being scary, and Notch seems pretty convinced he’s made them just that.

“So I made it passive until you looked straight at it. And that was scary. Suddenly you could walk up to these looking beasts (they’re three meters tall) and watch them as they moved their blocks around, but as soon as you happened to look straight at them, they’d attack. And by “straight at them”, I mean putting the reticule on top of them. You can keep them visible on screen and actually look straight at them in real life, but as soon as your in game character looks straight at them, boom.”

“I wanted something a bit more psychological. So to really drive home the point of looking at them being bad, I made the Endermen freeze and turn towards you when you look at them. As long as you look straight at them, they stand perfectly still and look straight at you. As soon as you look away, they will run (very fast) towards you.”

Once eye contact is made with an Endermen there is no escape, and the horrifying mob can actually teleport to catch up to a player who is really far away. The new monster sounds like it could possibly beat out the Creeper as Minecraft‘s poster boy, but fans will have to decide for themselves which creature they love to hate more when the Endermen makes its debut – which will presumably be in the much anticipated 1.8 update.