MinecraftEdu has been used in classrooms around the world to help with the teaching of children, using a modified version of the original Minecraft game. Now Microsoft have snatched it up and will be re-launching it as Minecraft Education Edition later on this summer.

Originally the product of education software developer TeacherGaming, they combined the popular game of Minecraft with features to aid learning. MinecraftEdu was been designed to help teachers manage their pupils’ in-class gaming sessions and has been used to teach everything from maths to foreign languages so far. Minecraft Education Edition will keep those same core features but will be improving upon them, although Microsoft hasn’t yet given any clues as to how they’re going to do this. For the moment Microsoft have said that MinecraftEdu will be continuing as normal, including the hosting service, until Education Edition is working and ready to go. All existing users of the software at that point will then be given a year’s pass of use for Minecraft Education Edition for free.

TeacherGaming have published an FAQ to spell out differences between the two versions as well as giving assurances that Minecraft Education Edition will be a positive thing for everyone.

“Minecraft: Education Edition builds on the early learnings from MinecraftEdu, while growing and expanding its feature set. Working with the MinecraftEdu creators Joel Levin and Santeri Koivisto, we started with all the learnings from the EDU edition, and built its key features into the Minecraft: Education Edition.  We also added new features including login and personalization, the student portfolio feature, a second screen experience for teachers, and the ability to save student progress.”

Exact details will be released within the next few days.

Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void may be looming on Tuesday, but this weekend all the focus was on the last ever Heart of the Swarm Global Championship Tournament. In a story that could not have been written better by Hollywood, 2013 World Champion SOS and 2014 champ Life made it all the way to the final set, facing off to see who would make Starcraft 2 history. It would be a massive understatement to say that the series was amazing. Going to the final game of a best of seven, the final match was an insane tug of war that actually destroyed one caster’s voice. RIP Artosis. In the end however, SOS took the championship and the $100,000.

Legacy of the Void comes out on Tuesday.

This past weekend, I was privileged to play an interesting new indie title named Mushroom 11.

When I watched the trailer of the game, I was instantly interested in the unique mechanic in controlling your ‘character.’ Of course the design of the character you control is absolutely worth mentioning. You play as an amorphic green blob, with no name that I was able to discern. I had no issue with the lack of description or simplicity of the character model, in fact, I applaud it. Mushroom 11’s tutorial instantly begins to show you how to control your blob, and the game becomes completely about the game’s mechanics.

The mechanics of the game appear shockingly simple, you essentially use the 2 mouse buttons to delete parts of your blob to move it. Except when you delete blocks, the blob replaces these blocks randomly out of different sides of itself where the level allows. The mouse gives you 2 types of control: a large sweeping deletion type, and a fine tuned deletion tool. The large sweeping tool, bound to the left mouse button, allows for rapid movement and easy size reduction. The fine tune deletion tool makes it much easier to delete smaller portions of your blob which becomes essential for some of the tougher puzzles as the levels progress.

During the hour I spent playing this game, I easily encompassed the tutorial and enough levels to start to need several tries to clear an area. I was even able to conquer 2 boss fights. It is definitely fair to say the game has a steep learning curve. Rather than being frustrated while playing, and failing several times, I started to see the brilliance in the game. It is the first game where I found myself not having direct control on my character and it’s movement through the game. We are allowed only indirect control, and it’s an absolutely fresh and fantastic idea for a game mechanic. I find myself more and more interested to see how the game will show me to stretch, bend, curve, and express the flexibility of my little blob through the future levels. With the modest price tag, this game is an absolute steal for hours of mind-bending gameplay.

A Solid 9/10

The only reason it’s not a 10 is because I really like a story and it has none. But Otherwise, this is an amazing game!

In the news of amazing things people continue to do with Minecraft comes this one: one player is taking on the challenge to recreate Pokemon Red in vanilla Minecraft. That is, the game of it. Quite a task.

Reddit user Magib1 has been working on their project for a while already and they estimate the rest will take “a few months” to finish. The system works through swapping custom textures into view with each click to simulate the moves made by the player.

“There’s a physical representation of the map in spawn chunks in which each block corresponds with a texture,” says its creator. “When the player clicks, a reader armor stand moves and clones the row of new textures behind the display. Display armor stands then detect the block type and stick the corresponding texture on their head before moving. The player model is just swapping between a static walking and standing texture.”

This isn’t the first time this user has done something like this in Minecraft before either, they’ve already constructed a working Pacman in Minecraft previously with ghost AIs and everything.

Recently the developer of World in Conflict, Massive decided that the time had come for the online functions of the RTS game to come to an end. The game had been released in 2007 and with low numbers playing it, it didn’t seem a good continuing investment of Ubisoft’s money anymore.

However, when they announced this on a post on their forums saying that “This includes Massgate [the website], the game servers and the forums, which means it will only be possible to play campaign and LAN games after that.” the small but active community wasn’t having it.

A Change.org petition began circulating through the community to try and save the online capabilities, and although it only gained 439 signatures, it’s made Ubisoft stop and take notice. They’ve since posted that they’re going to postpone the October 6th shutdown date to weigh other options first. “We are still investigating some potential community based solutions,” the update says. “No promises, but we are looking into it. We want to make sure all options are exhausted before we shut it down.”

Although it wouldn’t be true to say that WiC is out of trouble just yet, it is kind of nice to see that sometimes the companies will take notice of what their gamers want. Even Ubisoft.