The sandbox building game Minecraft has become such a smash-hit over the last decade that Mojang is working on multiple spin-offs. Its AR mobile game Minecraft Earth has come and gone, but the Diablo-like Minecraft Dungeons is still receiving new content. Meanwhile, action-strategy game Minecraft Legends was announced during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12, presenting a whole new look at the universe in conjunction with Blackbird Interactive.
Even with these different projects in the pipeline, production on Minecraft proper continues going strong. Though the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected Mojang's scale on updates like Caves and Cliffs, as well as The Wild Update that launched on June 7, its voxel-based game is growing more complex each year. The Wild Update, Minecraft Version 1.19, was underwhelming to many due to its two biomes - mangrove swamps and the deep dark - only featuring a small handful of mobs, alongside a few quality-of-life changes like creating boats with chests. The swamp variant in particular has a lot of potential for additional mobs down the line.
Fireflies
The main reason for Minecraft players to find Mangrove Swamps, which generate closer to warm biomes like jungles and deserts, are its mangrove trees and frogs. These amphibians are particularly interesting given Minecraft players can tame and breed frogs, watching them grow from tadpoles into unique forms depending on where they spawn.
One piece of content cut from The Wild Update's original pitch at Minecraft Live 2021 was fireflies. Though these sparkling bugs would have been a great aesthetic addition to swamp biomes, Mojang removed them after finding this prospective food source for frogs would be poisonous to them in real life. Fireflies are still in Minecraft's development pipeline, unlike updates to birch forests that were cut after early concept stages, so a future update could see them making fun light sources when placed in glass bottles.
Mud Slimes
Speaking of light sources, because frogs can no longer eat fireflies in Minecraft, Mojang gave them the ability to eat slimes. Basic slimes are more likely to appear in traditional swamp biomes so it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but an interesting quirk is that frogs produce a bioluminescent froglight block when they eat magma cubes from the Nether. Given the difficulty of getting these two mobs in the same room across dimensions, new variants of slimes would be fun to see in mangrove swamps. Considering the biome is defined by mud blocks introduced in Version 1.19, mud-based slimes might fit the theme well.
Alligators
One big thing mangrove swamps are missing is a unique hostile mob to call their own. Witches and black cats are somewhat more common in basic swamps due to the presence of swamp hut structures, so something new hidden among the thick roots of the mangrove trees could be an effective way to surprise players. In real life, these trees are typically found in tropical areas around the equator, including parts of the southern United States like Florida and Louisiana. Including alligators based on this part of the world would be especially interesting if Mojang leaned into making them look like logs or driftwood while in the water, forcing players to scan the environment closely.
Piranhas
Piranhas are another interesting potential mob. Primarily found in freshwater lakes and rivers in South America, one could argue Piranhas work better in Minecraft's jungle biome than mangrove swamps. However, jungles don't typically spawn with huge bodies of water in the same way, so some liberties could be taken based on their proximity. It would be fitting to see piranhas take the role of a hostile mob because mangrove swamps already spawn schools of tropical fish. Just like alligators would hide by pretending to be logs, piranhas could hide by pretending to be other fish. Perhaps a school of piranha could be just as threatening as the deep dark biome's Warden.
Minecraft is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.