Tricks and Treats – Minecraft get Halloween goodies for a price

There are a staggering amount of low-res, randomly generated game worlds that get played out there, more than I care to imagine. At last count of all platforms, the combined copies of Minecraft have sold at over 70 million – that’s a lot of cubes of wood being chopped.

Just in time for All Hallow’s Eve, Mojang’s creative team have released the Halloween Mashup Pack, which includes a spooky texture pack, 43 player skins and themed music to go with it. I’m not the Minecrafter in the house, nor do I have any direct interest in it. My 11-year-old son, however, is obsessed with the game – I only ever play it to placate his gaming interests and serve generally as a worker bee, following along while he runs around architecting new things.

Since this is a mashup pack, you can actually start a new game in their own Halloween world – and if there was a reason to drop $3.99USD, then this is it. Secret passages, a haunted-house-style roller-coaster that spans most of the world and a real attention to detail will have you saying “Ooo, look!” From lonely vampire castles nestled on mountaintops in the clouds to a carnival town where nothing is as it seems, the experience of riding the rails and taking in the unfathomable attention to detail they went to in this world makes me glad to have played it.

In the mashup world included, while I wandered around awestruck at how many hours it would have taken to create just the first gravestone which is the size of a skyscraper, he began deconstructing and absorbing the design ideas presented within. By the time I managed to get back to the starting town, he’d already redesigned a building to his liking and had started work on repurposing a second one.

On Windows and mobile platforms there is a skins pack for $1.99. However, there is a magic in the console addon that if you’re a fan, you will likely appreciate. It isn’t just music and textures and a boat-load of player skins (as impressive as they may be), the crafted world is worth the extra couple dollars to get the full experience.

It even got me to fire it up while my son wasn’t around. Now *that* is an accomplishment.