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Minecraft for Raspberry Pi coming 'soon' for hackable fun

Minecraft developer Mojang promises the game will be free, and will let you tinker with code to change gameplay.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
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Luke Westaway
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The perennially popular Minecraft is heading to the humble Raspberry Pi, promising owners of the dirt-cheap microcomputer the chance to play and hack the block-bashing create-a-thon for free.

On its official blog, Minecraft developer Mojang says it has "dedicated time to porting a version of Minecraft: Pocket Edition that comes with a revised feature set and support for multiple programming languages".

"You could organise the cheapest LAN party of all time," the game's creators promise, "or use the Pi to learn the fundamentals of programming on a minuscule budget."

Minecraft: Pocket Edition is inevitably more limited than the full version, and doesn't feature the power to combine inventory items to create new and exotic objects -- a key feature in creating, say, an enormous glass monument shaped like your own face, 1,000 virtual feet high and leering toward the sun, defiant in its magnificence.

It's not clear yet which features the Raspberry Pi version will and won't have, but it seems whatever's missing in gameplay will be compensated for by sheer hackability. Mojang wants its Pi version of Minecraft to encourage would-be coders, vowing "there's opportunity to break open the code and use programming language to manipulate things in the game world".

"You'll be learning the new skills through Minecraft," says Mojang, which recently concluded its Minecon convention -- ably and exhaustively covered by our pals at GameSpot UK.

There could be one snag for existing Pi owners -- bit.tech reports that Mojang is using second-edition versions of the Raspberry Pi, which comes with 512MB of RAM rather than the earlier 256MB. Fingers crossed that doesn't rule out block-busting kicks for earlier Pi-buyers.

Minecraft has already made an appearance on PC, as well as the Xbox, Android and iOS. Are there any other platforms you think it should be on? Tell me in the comments or on our Facebook wall.