You’d think that after releasing Minecraft from its beta shackles last year, that developer Notch would want to take some time off and collect his thoughts. Unfortunately, for him, and fortunately for us, those creative juices just can’t be stopped, and we were blessed with Notch’s most recent creation, Minicraft, a few weeks ago.

Created as part of a 48-hour theme-based game development competition, Minicraft appeared to be a spiritual successor to Minecraft, but really was its own clever, small-scale creation. Also, as it turns out, Notch isn’t done with Minicraft; he actually plans to turn this into something substantial.

According to Notch, he has renamed the game MiniTale, and based on the game’s official sites, he plans on revealing more about the game soon.

"Finally came up with a decent name for <the_game_i_need_to_rename>! MiniTale. Even snagged the .com and .net for it, yay"

For those that might not have been keeping up with the Ludum Dare, or who missed out on the Minicraft news, the game was essentially a top down version of Minecraft that was more goal-oriented and dealt with the theme of being alone. Much like Minecraft it was simple in execution, but I’d wager, given Minecraft’s proclivity for growing and growing, that the final product will blossom into something much more expansive.

Minecraft’s “publisher” Mojang isn’t taking a break either — they are hard at working preparing the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft, and are hard at work on their follow-up, Scrolls. A ton of positive situations have arisen from the hit that is Minecraft, and we’re happy to see all parties involved flourishing, and continuing to put out content.

After handing over the reins to Minecraft in December one has to imagine that Notch is itching to get his next project up and running. Though MiniTale isn’t that next project it is yet another chance to experience Notch’s creativity at work. Keep checking out Minitale.com to see what Mojang has in store for us.

What do you think of MiniTale? What would you like to see this side project blossom into?

Source: Notch