Minecraft Surprise Free Spin-Off Game Surfaces, Will Consume Your Time

Minecraft is, by many metrics, the biggest game of all time, selling over 350 million copies as of April 2025, and spawning a whole generation who were defined by their blocky creations.

The game has rarely showed signs of slowing down at all over the years, with new updates, versions and patches to keep the experience fresh for the hordes who still login to play every day.

Outside of the main game, the company has also begun to experiment more with spin-offs that change the gameplay loop in some way. Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft: Story Mode are probably the best remembered examples of this, but it should come as no surprise that the developer hasn't finished dipping in that particular well.

Mojang Studios/Xbox

Free-to-Play Mobile Game Minecraft Blast Begins Playtesting

As first reported by PCGamesN, Minecraft Blast, a new free-to-play mobile game developed in conjunction with development giant King, has begun its playtesting process, but only in certain regions.

In sharing a statement announcing the game on the official Minecraft website, the team behind the release shared the following, "Mojang Studios is teaming up with our talented sister studio King (creators of Candy Crush Saga) to work on a new, Minecraft-themed mobile project: Minecraft Blast!"

"We’re extremely early days with this project and plan to start rolling out small, limited-run tests in select markets to help us gather early feedback and involve our community from the start. We’re excited to be on this journey with King and looking forward to sharing more in the future as the project progresses," it reads.

The regions in question are actually just one region right now, with players in Malaysia able to log in and try the game out, with Canada up next at this early point in the game's development cycle.

The game features some of the Candy Crush hallmarks, with coloured block matching driving much of the gameplay. As is the case in may games of its ilk, you'll need to match several blocks to destroy the ones next to it, in order to eventually clear out whatever the objective block is for that level.

That is then diversified by special blocks like TnT and other more explosive targets to go for.

The developer has promised playtests in more regions soon, though they haven't given an exact breakdown of who is going to get access and when. Equally, each playtest is time-limited, to allow the team to implement feedback in between each run out.