If we know anything, fans of Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings can move mountains…and that is just what the team at Minecraft Middle-earth has done for 10 years.
TheOneRing.net would like to congratulate the team at Minecraft Middle-earth for celebrating 10 years of meticulously recreating an immersive The Lord of the Rings based world for gamers and adventurers alike.
If you have been living under a block (š), Minecraft is a 3D world where users can explore and create entire worlds one block at a time. To then build the whole of Middle-earth is a historic task, and the team at Minecraft Middle-earth continue to succeed in this momentous undertaking. Check out the video below, a gallery of the the amazing areas created, and an excerpt from the PCMag interview with the creator. And of course, you can get involved their official website MCMiddleearth.com.
Vermeersch was first introduced to Minecraft when the sandbox was still in beta back in 2009, and like many others who played early on in the game’s development, he got completely hooked. As a moderator on a Dutch Minecraft server, the idea of building Middle-earth was something that had begun to float around the server’s community.
“I grew up with Lord of the Rings, like most people around 30 years old I imagine,” Vermeersch says. “We had people who were interested from the Minecraft forums, so we had this solid player base to start with. We began building the basic locations, like Bree and Hobbiton, then after publishing screenshots, people got hooked on what we were doing and started joining the project.”
Daedalic Entertainment’s upcoming stealth-based game “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum” had its first teaser trailer drop a couple of days ago on gaming and entertainment company IGN’s YouTube channel.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a decent LOTR game and while this upcoming release focuses on the non-hero non-Fellowship type character, it’s nice to see Tolkien’s world getting some mainstream gaming action.
Also unlike previous LOTR games, Gollum will take on a different play style, moving away from swords, bows and arrows etc in favour of stealthy traversal. Stealth and vertical parkour-style movement will be familiar to fans of game franchises like Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia etc.
It’s not all stealth-play though as lead game designer Martin Wilkes describes the combat “Gollum doesnāt use weapons, but he can distract enemies with throwables. In parts of the game, he will also profit from the abilities of special allies and can use the environment to his advantage.”.
Outside of gameplay mechanics, the game will focus more on Tolkien’s original story and drawings along with some common themes shared with the movies. “Peter Jacksonās movies are fantastic but our game is based on the original book license,” continues Martin. “Our world follows the same descriptions and is also in parts inspired by the same artworks as were the movies. Their influence on popular culture has been tremendous, so we have to be mindful of players who might only know Middle-earth from the two film trilogies.”
It is an exciting day for fans of LEGOĀ® and The Lord of the Rings! As of right now, you can download the iOS game ‘LEGOĀ® The Lord of the Rings’ from the Apple App Store! Check out the full release below as well as some screen caps. The game is only $4.99 and available for both iPhone and iPad. [Download]
