I used to play Minecraft Dungeons with my youngest daughter Ronia, who is known as "The Chu." If there were any questions about her parentage, her need to craft elaborate names for her favorite weapons probably would have cleared them up. The main thing it indicated to me was that - after Dungeons and arguably Minecraft: Story Mode - there's all kindsa headroom in Minecraft, and it doesn't have to feel mercenary.

That having been firmly established, I saw a trailer where they were definitely doing a Minecraft RTS thing, and it didn't occur to me until it released that Minecraft Legends and Brutal Legend might share some kind of DNA.  It's apparently co-developed by Blackbird Interactive, which did the excellent Hardspace: Shipbreaker, but since Double Fine is a subsidiary of Xbox Game Studios who knows.  Those concepts didn't work especially well for me back in the day, mostly because I thought that I had purchased one game and then gotten another different game.  Judging from the reception it's gotten so far  it seems like there's just a mismatch somewhere.  I have molting larvae at home - wet, writhing larvae - and I think it's important to have games that can teach kids what they need to know in order to grapple with traditional genres.  I sorta wonder if this isn't the YA version of an RTS, which I imagine would make a grown person feel like they hadn't seen much.  But kids don't know some of this shit.  You can't just, like, start them out on C&C Generals.       

I'll be materializing at my best friend Gabriel's house this very afternoon - Josh will get the stream good and hot from Noon until 2pm PST, at which point we will seize the means of production and invariably make everything much worse.  If you…  if you want that, this is where we'll be.   

(CW)TB out.