October Roundup
I don’t know about you, but Autumn is bringing the cold along with it and I’m feeling chilly! Thankfully, being British, I have plenty of tea to keep me warm and lots to write about, so grab a blanket and a cuppa, and let me tell you what we’ve been up throughout the month of October.
We started off the month with a stream to celebrate the re-opening of the Noxcrew & Friends Survival Server, which opened its doors once more with a brand new theme. The server has been a big part of our community for the last six months, and this restart has allowed everyone to take on new roles within the world, as well as embrace the underworld with the new ‘Nether City’ theme; perfect for this time of the year! In order to show our appreciation for our stream fans and community members, we gave away an Xbox One S Minecraft Bundle to one lucky winner. Congratulations to Goldinis who picked up the prize! If you’d like to learn more about the server, click here, or hop on over to our Discord server to see what’s going on right now!
The best piece of news to come out of Minecraft this month is that the Minecraft Cat Competition is now live! As we announced about a littler earlier in the month, you have until November 12th to submit your can to become one of the new cat skins in Minecraft’s mob update. To enter, all you need to do is upload a picture or video of your favourite feline friend to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and tag it with #Minecraftcatcontest. There are some fantastic entries already so make sure that you get involved before the closing date!
While Noxite and Avondale were off gallivanting in Boston for MINECON Earth at the end of last month, everyone else in the team was busy starting work on our next couple of projects. We’ve had some wonderful feedback about our Creative Toolbox maps, so we decided to keep them coming and produce two new themes before Christmas! Our fourth map in the series, which should hit the marketplace some time in November, has four themes in one and is absolutely perfect for anyone who is a fan of movies (oops, spoilers). As well as planning the perfect marketplace maps for you, for a short time only, we’ve brought Gregan back to the team and he’s currently working on a top secret project alongside music genius, EpicLandlord and _Crafty, who you’ll know well if you’re a fan of our NOX.GS Java server. They are working on an exciting collaboration that we will hopefully be able to share with you soon.
Now, as we all know, October is for pumpkins, falling leaves and Halloween, and we’re really enjoying seeing the season being embraced by creators all across the Minecraft community. Although we opted out of the Halloween themed content this year, we’ve been on the look out for the best scary content to get us in the mood for this spectacularly spooky season. I’ve listed just some of our favourites below to round off this month’s roundup!
1. Noxcrew’s ‘Dropper of Horrors’
Last year we came out with Dropper of Horrors, a Minecraft dropper map based on three original scary stories, set in a haunted movie theatre. While our favourite voice actor and story teller tells you some spooky tales, you can drop or parkour down each of the ten tunnels, grabbing collectables on your way.
You might think it’s a little cheeky adding our own map to our list of favourites, and yes it is a little, but it honestly is a favourite among the team. Our Community Manager Noctis is especially fond of it, being a huge fan of all things spooky as well as taking credit for the creepy voice and cackle of The Wisp!
You can grab Dropper of Horrors right now on Minecraft Bedrock Edition.
2. Minecraft’s ‘From The Shadows’ Skin Pack
Image: Minecraft
This week, Minecraft hit us with the first HD skins available for Bedrock edition, and they’re spectacularly creepy! This official Minecraft skin pack comes with 16 skins, all of which are wonderfully gross in detail.
Our personal favourites are the three demons ‘See No Evil’, ‘Hear No Evil’ and ‘Speak No Evil’, which each has a certain body part missing. Nice. If you’re looking for the best in-game Halloween costumes, then look no further!
Find out more about them over on minecraft.net or pick them up from the marketplace.
3. House of How’s ‘House of Screams’
Image: House of How
House of Screams is a brand new single player map from Official Minecraft partners, House of How. Players are encouraged to play the adventure map with lights off and headphones on, so you know there are going to be plenty of creepy surprises along the way!
The map is incredibly atmospheric, with lots of custom sounds, models and art to add to the experience. If you’re up for a bit of a scare this Halloween, this map’s a great one to try. It’s out on the marketplace right now. Click here to find out more!
4. Planet Minecraft’s Laboratory Experiments Skin Contest
Image: Cyprezz
PMC, the community run forum for everything blocky, has been running a Halloween themed skin contest for everyone in the community. With a ‘Laboratory Experiments’ theme, entrants were encouraged to ‘stitch a skin together depicting a horrible or beautiful creation of science, wizardry, or downright insanity!’ This should be interesting…
Entries for the contest closed on October 24th, but we’re eager to know who makes it to the final this week. Good luck to everyone who makes it through! Keep an eye on the competition here, or follow Planet Minecraft on Twitter.
Thanks for joining us for another month! If you missed our September Roundup, we talked about our two most recent releases, SPACE and Grid Runners, the latter of which is still available for FREE on Bedrock. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t already.
Over the next four weeks we’ll be dropping some behind the scenes goodness from one of our current maps, as well as some sneak peeks of new maps over on Twitter and Instagram. Have a fantastically spooky Halloween and we’ll see you next month!