New highs, new lows, new items and new mobs, courtesy of Mojang...

I love Minecraft. I play it far too much to be good for me, even when compared to the frankly disgusting amounts of time I play games in general, I play Minecraft an awful lot. But I don't really like to write about it. The reason for that is that if you play Minecraft then you are probably already know all about it, and the upcoming releases. The community for this game is so close-knit, and the support, communication and announcments from Notch (the games creator) and Jeb (the games main coder) are so frequent and clear that there is often little 'news' that you can actually tell a Minecraft player, the chances are, they heard it directly from Notch at the same time you did. If not before.

But this is a big one. The 'Adventure Update' has been a long time coming, and was set to bring purpose to Minecraft. Previously the game has been a huge, randomly-generated, open-world sandbox for players to explore, build and survive within. But there was no actual reason to do any of this, no in-game incentives to actually do anything at all. The Adventure Update was set to rectify this, and bring an actual goal to Minecraft.

However, that may not actually happen. Minecraft's development is a strange thing, while Notch seems to delight in making vague references to upcoming releases on Twitter and Reddit, and promising them tantalisingly close, Jeb seems to be much more of a realist, keeping dates vague and changes as possibilities rather than facts. We are constantly given new information to have it changed, the release date for 1.8 has been a lot of different times, but now, apparently, we are getting a lot of it on September 8th and then the rest in 1.9, sometime in the near future.

The details of this update are also still vague, but the new video, and some recent Tweets from Notch and Jeb have confirmed some very special additions to the game, and they are getting people very, very excited.

The list of new additions to the game is almost as long as its list of current features, with a whole host of new and exciting things being added. Terrain is getting a total overhaul, the way the games different landscapes (or 'Biomes') are generated is getting changed, and a whole new landscape of giant mushrooms are being added, along with flowing rivers, huge valleys and underground canyons.

Not just the land is changing though, there are new player animations, new mob interactions, NPC villages (no actual NPC's till 1.9 though), new mobs, new blocks, new colours, a new and improved rain. Basically, Minecraft will be much, much closer to being a finished game after this update.

Watch the new video below to see some of these new features in action.

The video was made by Hat Films the same team behind the trailer for the 1.7 or 'Pistons' update. They also make a 'behind the scenes' for each trailer, as the whole process is actually created within the game, everything you see is 'hand built' within the confines of the game.

From the look of it, this update is going to make Minecraft twice the game it already was, and with over 12,966,722 registered users already, it doesn't look like we have seen the end of the Minecraft explosion just yet. Don't forget, we still have 1.9 to look forward too..

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