The Nether arrived in 2010. The End followed in 2011. Then, for fifteen years, nothing — three dimensions, one of them deliberately named to suggest finality, while Minecraft became the best-selling video game in history. At this year’s Minecraft Live, the wait ended. The Sift, the game’s fourth dimension, is coming to both Bedrock and Java editions, the first whole new reality added since 2011.
Details, for now, are thin. The Sift will have its own suite of biomes and mobs, and — the one specific Mojang let slip — blue bunnies, according to Kotaku’s account of the broadcast. Curiously, it will debut not in the main game, where it is not due until next year, but in Minecraft Dungeons II, the sequel releasing on September 29. Given how thoroughly the ores and elements of the Nether and the End reshaped how the base game is played, a fourth dimension is a load-bearing addition, bunnies or not.
Dungeons, with jumping
Of Minecraft’s two major spin-offs, Minecraft Dungeons was the success — a co-op isometric hack-and-slash, rewarding for a parent and child to play together — while Minecraft Legends, as Kotaku put it, was a huge whiff. The sequel keeps the original’s core but changes nearly everything around it: a new, far more colorful art style; new dungeons; a story themed around the Deep Dark and the Ancient Cities, which means the Warden; and, at last, the ability to jump. Armor now comes in the main game’s traditional four pieces, supplemented by talismans that confer passive bonuses. Levels are bigger and, unusually for the series, interconnected, so players choose their route through a session rather than selecting discrete missions from an over-map.
On the creative side, Jens Bergenström outlined changes intended to make player-built content both more involved and more accessible, for newcomers and professionals alike. A new set of sound-effect packs is coming to the Marketplace later this year — no firmer date was given — letting players change how everything sounds in the base game or in their own creations. Because they sit on the Marketplace, expect them to cost money.
Ice, zombies, and what to do with both
The biome news will mean little to non-players and a great deal to regulars: underground ice caves, a rare spawn extending the game’s cold biomes, ore-heavy and stocked with easily harvested ice. Among the glowing ice crystals lives a new mob, the frozen zombie, which lobs ice balls and, if it lands enough melee hits, freezes the player solid. The ice balls can be caught and thrown back — or at other players, which Kotaku’s reporter predicted would be the principal use — and they serve as an ingredient for freezing potions. The crystals themselves are decorative and work as a light source in a pinch. Seasoned players will already have done the farming arithmetic: expose an ordinary zombie to powdered snow.
Elsewhere in the broadcast: the main game officially arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 27, with graphics closer to what Xbox and PS5 players know, and there was word of the Minecraft section under construction at Britain’s Chessington World of Adventures, along with a themed hotel — news of particular interest to those within driving distance of Surrey.
But the dimension is the story. Fifteen years produced an entire industry of mods attempting what Mojang has now simply announced. All that is known for certain about The Sift is its biomes, its mobs, its arrival next year, and one more thing. The bunnies there are blue.