Adventure Time comes to Minecraft!

WHAT TIME IS IT? Well, 3AM when I'm writing this, actually. I'm simply too excited to sleep, because today it's... ADVENTURE TIME!

Yes! Finn, Jake, Ice King, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum and tons more of your favourite characters from the excellent animated series have arrived in Minecraft! But this isn't just another skin pack - goodness no - as the entire land of Ooo takes over your Minecraft world! Take Fionna and Cake on a tour of the Candy Kingdom, fight Ice King in the Ice Kingdom and even take a trip with Flame Princess to the Fire Kingdom! And much much more!

Not a fan of the show? Then you have no soul. Sorry! But that is a fact.

The pack should be rolling out across Console Edition right now, with Switch and Wii U versions to follow a little later today or tomorrow. Playing on Pocket or Windows 10? Don't worry, this mash-up pack will be with you soon!

++Update: Thanks to the mystery of time, "Soon" has tranformed into "Now"! It's out today - July 6th - on Pocket and Windows 10! Totally orthogonal!++

It was hard to find someone more excited about this mash-up pack than I am, but Marsh nailed it: he interviewed Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time! WHAT.

MARSH: Play games much?

PENDLETON: I do. Right now I'm getting into virtual reality games. VR makes me feel like I'm somewhere else entirely ... the first games I tried were The Blu, which sent me under the ocean to kiss a big whale on its eyeball, and Tilt Brush which sent me to space and let me paint with rainbows ... but I'm really excited about being inside abstract visual spaces that make me feel like I am no longer in this dimension. VR can take me to that episode of The Twilight Zone where the little girl gets lost in the 4th dimension where time and space merge into one. I want to be that little girl!

M: Do you have a fondness for a particular period in gaming, or a particular series?

P: My favorite game is MYST. When I was little I'd leave the game running on my computer and just listen to the wind blowing sound effects, imagining that I was on the island. The characters in MYST had the ability to create worlds by describing them in books using special ink and paper and then transport into those worlds by placing their hands inside the book ... that really stuck with me.

M: Adventure Time has a lot of direct references to games, but do you feel like any one game in particular has had a strong influence?

P: Adventure Time is heavily inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. I loved poring over the D&D Monster Manuals when I was a kid ... ah and still do as a grown man! I play D&D regularly and I enjoy how much attention is paid to creating a fully realized world. All of the monsters have cultures and traits and habits. They felt like they existed outside of the story I was in. In one background of an episode of Adventure Time, Jesse Balmer drew a little door on the side of a staircase ... who lives in that staircase?! That's the kind of stuff that I love, stuff that makes the world feel larger than I can even know.

M: How much do you love Minecraft on a scale from 'loads' to 'almost an illegal amount'?

P: I've spent a lot of time in Minecraft, I do love it a lot. I spent a lot of time playing on a DayZ themed Minecraft modded server. That had "/whisper" commands so you could type within 2 squares of a friend and not have the rest of the players hear you ... that was neat. You had to hide from other players and build in secret or they'd steal your stuff. So I built a boat and sailed way out till I spotted a hole in the ocean floor. I broke my boat to cover my tracks and swam down to the hole which became a waterfall, flowing down into an ocean cavern. I love how the stakes in Minecraft aren't so much your life, but your creative projects, your buildings and farms. I think that's wonderful.

M: Adventure Time feels very Minecrafty. Or maybe the other way around! Not just that it has a sprawling brightly coloured landscape, but the entire attitude of AT feels very positive, big-hearted and full of derring-do. We want that for our players, too. Do you see other similarities?

P: I like to lose myself in games and stories, and I did that a bunch in Minecraft and in making Adventure Time. I also love how serene Minecraft can be, the chimes when the sun rises are so nice. I hope Adventure Time is as pleasant to watch.