Mojang, creators of massive global hit “Minecraft,” are working on its first new major game in more than a decade: “Minecraft: Dungeons.”

The game is a dungeon crawler a bit like Blizzard’s “Diablo” titles but starring the blocky creatures, characters, and creations of “Minecraft.” The game, due out on PC in 2019, will support up to four players in cooperative play.

“This was a passion project from a small dedicated team at Mojang,” said Jens Bergensten, lead developer at the studio. “It lets players live the experience of spelunking, mining, and cave exploring in the sense of a classic dungeon crawler game.”

Bergensten said the game will feature both the well-known creations from the original game but also a bunch of new items and bosses.

“It’s a distilled version of ‘Minecraft,’” Bergensten said, noting that it won’t have building or block destruction. “We wanted to focus on making the dungeon crawler part of the game as good as possible. We talked about adding building a lot, but we were concerned it would distract from what the game is meant to be about.”

The adventure game will feature a story and is being built inside Unreal Engine, he said. There are plans for a beta, but it will be rolled out to a relatively small group of people.

The new game, which doesn’t yet have a price, was announced during the weekend’s Minecon Earth 2018.

Like death, taxes, and NCIS, Minecraft simply won’t stop. Nearly a decade has passed since the game first appeared in early access on the PC, the block-world franchise is still kicking. Fans have been excited for next year’s Village and Pillage Update, and the development team is holding a new contest that will allow one lucky player to have their cat immortalized in-game via a custom cat skin.

If you feel that your cat has what it takes to live forever in the digital block universe, you’ll need to submit a picture or video of it to either Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram while using the hashtag #Minecraftcatcontest.

Applications are being accepted now through November 12. The finalists will be formally announced on November 16, at which point the community will be able to cast votes for which of the three final cats will make the cut for inclusion into the game via a skin created by pixel artist Jasper Boestra. The winning cat will be announced by the Minecraft development team on November 19.

For a full rundown of all the official rules of the contest, please refer to the Minecraft Cat Contest rules page. Keep it tuned to Shacknews for more updates on Minecraft’s Pillage and Village update as they become available.

Amateur esports company Super League Gaming announced three distinct challenges for its Minecraft community all centered around the upcoming “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” movie on Monday.

Super League is gearing up for the Dec. 14 release of the animated film in style, with three competitions held between Oct. 27 and Dec. 9.

First up, Super League’s Minecraft City Champs tournament will have players battling it out in the new “Spider-Verse: Domination,” a mini-game inspired by the film that has teams of five battling to snatch up and then maintain points in a map of New York City based on the setting of the feature film.

The Minecraft City Champs competition will be held in select movie theaters across 16 competing, major markets in the US during four Saturdays in a row, starting Oct. 27. The competition is open to registered players 17 or under, and registration currently costs $49.99 for those who sign up by 12 p.m. PT on Monday. Participants will receive a special jersey and access to an early screening of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” In one of the cities (to be announced), a “Minecraft influencer” will greet the players in a red carpet style premiere, according to a press release.

Next up, Super League’s November Minecraft Monthly program’s theme will be “The Battle for NY,” and will also feature “Spider-Verse: Domination.” This competition will have players participating from the comfort of their homes every Sunday starting on Nov. 4. Players will compete in Super League Minecraft mini-games set in “film-based maps of New York City” for the chance to win some special prizes. The kickoff will include one “top Minecraft influencer” livestreaming as they play alongside the participants.

Finally, December will bring a build competition open to all American “Minecraft” players who want to try their hand at creating a “Spider-Verse” version of New York City inspired build. The competition will run from Dec. 1 to Dec. 9. The larger “Minecraft” community will be able to view these creations, which will feature “individual spots within New York City,” according to a press release, on Super League’s site.

Matt Edelman, the CCO of Super League Gaming, expressed his enthusiasm for the three competitions coming up soon.

“Super League Gaming is a player-first company – we constantly strive to bring more value into the player experience,” said Edelman. “Sony Pictures immediately understood that and encouraged us to design an authentic program to support ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ that would excite and delight our community. We can’t wait for it to launch!”

Minecraft developer Mojang has announced a new competition aimed at finding a new feline superstar. This is basically a fancy way of saying that your pet cat could end up being in the game next year. Cool, right? Cats are awesome, after all. Except when they wake you up at 3.00am just to see if you’re in the house.

Anyway, to enter all you have to do is take a snapshot or video of your furry friend and share it on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using the hashtag #Minecraftcatcontest. Just make sure you do your cat proud and have he/she looking their best, eh?

Mojang is giving you until November 12 to submit your chosen cat, after which point the community team will narrow down the submissions to the final three felines.

You can then vote on which cat makes it into the game via social media, with more details being shared on November 16, at which point voting stations will open. The winning cat will be announced on November 19, before joining Minecraft via the Village and Pillage update in 2019.

You can read up on more details regarding the competition https://minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraftnet-cat-contest-terms .

With the gym lights turned down low, video-game music throbbing, and a state-of-the-art projector system casting space-age targets onto two walls, a new kind of phys-ed class aimed at getting the post-Nintendo generation to get up and run around has arrived in the Philadelphia area.

It took the kids at the Valley Day School in Morrisville a few minutes to get the hang of newfangled games that were part-dodgeball, part-basketball, and part-Super Mario Brothers. But after several minutes of sometimes mad scrambling across the gym floor, one group of fifth and sixth graders was giggling and squealing and their hearts were almost certainly racing.

It’s exactly what the Canadian developers of this newfangled hybrid gym class, called the Lu Interactive Playground, were going for.

The $28,000 price tag for the system includes the two large projectors on the ceiling, two other devices that house lights and the computers that help teachers control 25 different games using hand-held controllers with keyboards. The games are projected on opposing gym walls, with synchronized lighting and sound effects, inviting kids to throw balls at targets ranging from animals to math problems to objects floating through space.

“It’s very fun – you get to interact with it, play around with it.” said eighth grader Scott Dangler, 13, of the sporting spectacle from augmented-reality design firm SAGA. “It’s like dodgeball – but more fun.”

Bemused but entertained by the high-tech competition he called “a very good workout” was physical education teacher James Romano – also the Jenkintown girls’ basketball coach, who just notched his 600th victory in his 36th season. Said Romano: “I don’t even have a cellphone – so this is outer space for me!”

Gym class had long been the last low-tech holdout as sleek laptops, virtual-reality goggles and other computer-driven learning tools have taken over traditional classrooms. But the computer age has also sparked the skyrocketing popularity of home video games and a rise in childhood obesity that experts have linked in part to kids shunning outdoor exercise to spend hours with their game controllers or on the web.

The concept behind SAGA’s Lu, which launched less than a year ago in a Quebec elementary school and which the company has installed in 30 locations worldwide this year, is quite simply that if you can’t beat video games, join them – by creating fast-moving games that drop kids into a high-tech playing field of augmented reality. The only other U.S. location is at a public elementary school in St. Louis.

“The kids we had in mind when we designed this were kids who were not really into sports, not good at sports or interested in sports,” said SAGA CEO Vincent Routhier. Designers looked at “how can we find a way to make them active a little more – while they are not realizing they are training or exercising…” he said. With a background in film production, he got the idea for the Lu after seeing a video of a gym teacher who had hooked up his iPad to a projector to create interactive games for kids.

The idea of integrating computer technology into gym class is not completely new. It started with Dance Dance Revolution, the turn-of-the-millennium game that got kids moving their feet to video cues on a screen. Other gym classes make use of technology to allow students to monitor their heart rate, or to receive instruction from a video screen while the teacher is freed up to coach kids on their individual technique.

One experimental concept that gained traction in as many as 700 classrooms across the Philadelphia School District was Johnson & Johnson’s Activity Works, which asked kids to get up and move around during simulated activities like trips to a rainforest or outer space. Bettyann Creighton, the executive director of health, safety and physical education for the city schools, said the classroom exercise raised student heart rates and improved learning.

“The brilliant part about all of this is more and more teachers are understanding that movement and physical activity really does bring improvement in academic achievement,” Creighton said. “It turns the brain on for learning.”

Science supports that. One 2013 study of 12,000 Nebraska schoolkids, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, found a strong correlation between a child’s physical fitness and higher achievement scores. That’s created an opening for high-tech entrepreneurs who say the best way to get students excited about exercise is to co-opt their fixation with video games.

Jarrod Saracco, a Delaware-based fitness industry consultant, said “it doesn’t matter if the kid’s an athlete or a video gamer…they’re both very competitive in their own nature. That kid playing Minecraft or Xbox, he wants to beat the game as much as [the] kid playing sports wants to beat his game.”

One of Saracco’s clients, Illinois-based Exergame Fitness, has created what relationship manager Parker Johnson called “an active learning lab” for kids at YMCAs or school gymnasiums, using exercise bikes or projections onto walls and floors. Johnson said the firm believes its products are particularly valuable for kids with anxiety issues or ADHD. “Exercise is a great way to settle the mind,” he said.

But Cheryl Richardson, senior director of programs at SHAPE America, a society of health and physical educators, said the new opportunities created by augmented reality in gym class could raise potential pitfalls for some students.

“It would probably not be a very friendly environment for students with autism – it could just be overwhelming,” Richardson said, adding she was also concerned whether the fast pace allows teachers to work with kids on skills that are traditionally part of phys-ed class, like encouraging good teamwork.

At the Lu session at Valley Day School, which has 90 kids in kindergarten through 12th grade who require emotional and academic support, Romano acknowledged that a lot of older kids prefer the sports they grew up with, like basketball or volleyball, which the school still offers, but that begins to change somewhat after they see how much the younger kids enjoy the new interactive games.

Seventh grader Emma Prendergast, 13, said “I actually enjoy it, though I much prefer traditional games” that have a little more freedom. “With the computer you have to play the game the way it’s designed.”

Education director Ron Hall said the lights and sounds and images are engaging and create an emotional connection for kids, especially those who dislike traditional sports. The system can also project movies or PowerPoints, an added value that he used to sell it to the school’s board of directors.

“Now we’ve got to turn our brains on!” exclaimed Hall as he switched to a math game. The problem 9 plus 6 popped up on the screen surrounded by various numbers. Six fifth and sixth graders started throwing balls until they hit the right answer.

“Little kids love it because of the sound and the music,” Romano said. “It’s an extension of computers. That’s the generation we live in. It’s stepping into a video game.”

After math it was time for spelling. A picture of a bull popped up and the kids quickly threw balls at letters to spell the word. Then came a tough one…rhinoceros. After R, they were stumped. But it didn’t matter. They kept throwing balls until the game was over and it was time to go back to class.

The game, said Keirra Ciotti, 10, as she skipped back to class, was “spectacular.”

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A festival this weekend at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks is built entirely around the video game “Minecraft.”

The event, called “Minefaire: A Minecraft Fan Experience,” is it “an experience that you really cannot replicate at home,” according to event founder Chad Collins.

“Imagine walking into 150,000 square feet of ‘Minecraft’ heaven,” he said.

If you’re not familiar with “Minecraft,” Collins describes it as using Legos but in digital form.

“So you’re able to create worlds and interact with other characters in the game,” he explained, “and just really let your imagination run wild.”

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Some of the highlights of this festival include live gaming, virtual reality and workshops.

“We’re going to have Guinness World Records on site,” added Collins, “so you’re going to be able to participate in special challenges they’re going to have, and brand new this year is the escape room.”

Parents: Don’t plan on just sitting back and watching your kids have fun.

“We always have every age group in mind, so we make sure that it’s a 100 percent inclusive experience,” said Collins.

That includes the learning lab, where parents and their children are encouraged to participate together.

“You’re going to learn something about your kid that you never learned before,” Collins said.

Minefaire takes place Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets range from $39 to $69. For more information, visit minefaire.com.

Elsewhere in the Delaware Valley this weekend, parents may have been ferrying their kids to the mall, dropping them off at soccer, or bribing their cooperation through the weekly supermarket run.

But Saturday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, Franklinville father Chris Gordon was his two young daughters’ escort to an alternative digital universe of biomes, precious ores, the Creeper, and other creatures well-known to youngsters around the globe as Minecraft.

“I love it — just to see the creativity. This one’s 2 years old,” Gordon said, nodding to daughter Charlotte, “and she can build her own world.”

“I like that you can do creative stuff,” agreed sister Elizabeth, 9.

Indeed there was lots of creative stuff and as many worlds as there were kids at Minefaire, a celebration of one of the world’s most popular computer games that continued Sunday at the expo center in Oaks, Montgomery County, and was expected to draw more than 10,000 people.

Steve Zawdony shooting video of his nephew in the costume judging at the Minefaire Expo at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on Saturday.
BRADLEY C BOWER FOR THE INQUIRER
Steve Zawdony shooting video of his nephew in the costume judging at the Minefaire Expo at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on Saturday.
Although the game is the brainchild of a Swedish game developer, Minefaire, first held in 2016, is the creation of two Central Bucks County fathers, Chad Collins, an engineer, and Gabe Young, who had a career in corporate project management. Their own kids helped spark their enthusiasm for gaming, which led to the two friends creating the first Minefaire locally and expanding it to 10 other U.S. cities. They’ve long left their day jobs, now also operating Brick Fest Live, inspired by Collins’ daughter Jordyn’s love of Legos, and their Young Innovators Fair.

“Not only do we have an opportunity to share this with our kids,” said Young, “but they actually help us.”

Minefaire is very much a family affair.

Mary Ann Elliot came all the way from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to bring her grandson Dominic Becker, who lives outside Reading, to the fair to celebrate his 13th birthday. Elliot was also giving the digital realm a whirl herself Saturday on an event-provided PC.

“Oooh, it did something!” Elliot exclaimed as a cube creation rotated on her screen. “Being a grandma, you’re always learning something.”

She wasn’t alone on the learning curve. On hand helping was Steve Isaacs, who teaches game development at a North Jersey middle school. Isaacs said he is one of about 300 Minecraft education mentors around the world who help teachers learn how to adapt the game to the classroom. He said it’s been used in just about every curriculum, including teaching Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, some of the game’s young practitioners could teach older heads a thing or two about being entrepreneurs. At this weekend’s Minefaire, there were YouTubers who have developed their own Minecraft channels with their fans.

Take Jack Beck, 20, who started making videos of his Minecraft adventures and creations when he was a sophomore at Holy Ghost Prep in Bensalem. Not long after, the videos and the game became a refuge of sorts. He said his little sister Mary was stricken with cancer; the videos became a way to help cheer up her and himself.

But then Beck started showing them on YouTube and getting paid. Now, he and his avatar BeckBroJack travel around the country with Minefaire. His YouTube hobby is now a full-time gig.

“He’s getting ready to hit a million subscribers,” said his father, Bill, helping out Saturday along with Jack Beck’s younger brother Adam. Mary, now healthy and strong, was expected later. The elder Beck said his son’s YouTube channel earns him about $20,000 a month — that’s a month — pretty good for a kid who only did a semester at Temple University’s business school.

Abaigeal Wallace, 8, and her YouTube Minecraft channel, Cake Longtail, aren’t quite there yet, but give her time.

“She’s got 32 subscribers!” said Bradin Roberts, 10, of Sea Isle City, boasting on behalf of her quieter cousin.

Abaigeal and her mother, Margaret McGrogan, traveled from Virginia Beach to attend Minefaire with their South Jersey relatives who own Shoobies restaurant in Sea Isle and also love Minecraft.

The young YouTuber may not be making a bundle on her channel yet, but in the meantime there are other rewards.

Abaigeal is on the autism spectrum, her mother said. She shies away from social settings and is measured with her words.

“But when she turns the camera on, she’s like a different person,” McGrogan said. “She’s like an actress. It’s a positive outlet.”

Abaigeal piped up in agreement: “I love everything about Minecraft.”

Minecraft is holding a contest right now that gives one lucky player the chance to have their cat featured in the building game.

There’s already a collection of animals in Minecraft that players can breed, tame, and use for various resources, but the newest Minecraft contest will add a cat that’s quite familiar to at least one person. Mojang shared news of the contest on Saturday with a post that said Minecraft is calling for everyone’s best cat pictures.

“All you have to do to enter is take a photo or video of the cat you think deserves to be in Minecraft, then share it on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #Minecraftcatcontest,” the contest details said.

Along with the full details on Minecraft’s contest, the post said that people have until November 12th to submit their cat contest contributions. After narrowing the choices down to three different options, players will then vote on which of the three cats they think should be added to the game.

Voting will take place on November 16th with the winner chosen on November 19th, but players can go ahead and start submitting their cat pictures now. People have already started doing so with some of the best cat contestants that we’ve seen shown below.

“Mustache Cat” sounds like the perfect name for a Minecraft mob anyway, so this cat submission already has a decent chance of winning the cat contest. The furball of a cat already got a decent amount of attention on Twitter with the contest just beginning recently as well.

Instead of sharing an image of a house cat, a user submitted a picture of an actual lion. It’s not a likely winner seeing how it’s not sticking within the contest’s rules, but it’s still a viable suggestion for Minecraft to one day add much larger cats to the game.

Doing some of Mojang’s work for them, one Twitter user submitted images of what their cat would look like if it were added in-game. Pictures of the actual cat weren’t provided, but it gives an idea of what a player’s cat would look like in Minecraft.

Moving away from the stream of cat photos, one player had a different idea: Create a cat version of an existing mob. The Twitter user above submitted an idea for a “Puffercatfish” that tweaks the Pufferfish added in Update Aquatic and mixes it with a cat.

Another unlikely submission but one that’s still unique, Bongo Cat was of course suggested to capitalize on the relatively new meme. Bongo Cat has been turned into many things before, but never a Minecraft mob, so even if Mojang doesn’t add it, players will likely find some way to mod in their own version of the musical cat.

When it was originally released in 1993, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm didn’t receive anywhere near the reception it deserved. It’s reasonable to assume that most audience members were still thinking of the Caped Crusader in the terms of Tim Burton’s two live-action films, and didn’t think that an animated Batman implied a film aimed at adults as much as it was children. But although few saw it at the time, the secret of Mask of the Phantasm gradually began to get out. Some 25 years later, it’s rightly recognized as the finest Batman animated feature … and by many as the best Batman movie, period.

Sure, you can have your Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan’s film is a masterpiece, but it’s more of a crime epic than it truly is a traditional Batman story, of the type you’d find in the original comics. Mask of the Phantasm, on the other hand, is a classic Batman comic come to life; the synthesis of everything that was already great about the style-defining Batman: The Animated Series. Its Gotham is a blood-skied, terrifying megalopolis of gothic architecture. Its villains are chilling, but not afraid to ham it up at the same time. Its style is gratuitous and bombastic. It’s much more BATMAN than something like The Dark Knight ever attempts to be.

And now, it’s back in theaters! Yes, for one night only, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm will be returning to select theaters on Nov. 12, 2018, via Fathom Events. It’s your chance to see the best Batman movie in the way it was always meant to be seen! Oh, and we should probably mention that Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman will also be returning to theaters in the same way on Nov. 25 and 27, but come on—we know which of these films is cooler, right?

Directed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, Mask of the Phantasm features many classic voices from the animated series and Batman lore, including Kevin Conroy as The Batman and Mark Hamill as The Joker, along with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Alfred, Dana Delany as Andrea Beaumont and Stacy Keach as The Phantasm.

You can buy tickets for Mask of the Phantasm in advance by clicking here. In the meantime, enjoy this modern recreation of a new Phantasm trailer.