Brickcraft

From Research Realm
Revision as of 01:00, 14 November 2025 by Ringtail Raider (talk | contribs)
Brickcraft
A virtual world showing rolling green hills made of LEGO bricks. The game interface shows five different shapes of LEGO bricks, each with ten thousand in the player's inventory.
Screenshot of the June 2012 prototype build
Developer(s)Mojang
Producer(s)Daniel Kaplan
Designer(s)Markus Persson
SeriesMinecraft
EngineLWJGL[1]
ReleaseCancelled
Genre(s)Sandbox
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Brickcraft is a cancelled sandbox game developed by Mojang.

Gameplay

My world :)
An example world in Brickcraft with several player-built LEGO models

Now that we have a leaked build, we can describe gameplay here.

Brickcraft was planned to be a sandbox game like Minecraft.

In the leaked build, the player can place five different LEGO bricks: 1×1 1×2, 2×2, 2×4, and 1×2 slopes. The playsr starts off with ten thousand of each type. The colours can be cycled through and chosen before placing. Breaking a brick increases its amount in the inventory; the brick's colour is ignored.

Development

In 2011, several months before the full version of Minecraft released in November, Persson attempted to reach out to the LEGO Group to propose a game project. Persson had been partially inspired by his childhood LEGO toys when designing Minecraft, and he had a lifelong dream of working with the company. Persson and one of his employees at Mojang, Daniel Kaplan, met with someone who was able to get the two of them in contact with the management at the LEGO Group. The two attempted to pitch a Minecraft-like LEGO game to the company, but were initially met with scepticism regarding

[2]: 9 

Mojang hired two new programmers for the project,[2]: 12  including Måns Olson,[tweet 1] who had been one of Minecraft's first testers and later directed Mojang's 2020 game Minecraft Dungeons, as one of the main designers.[3][4][tweet 2][tweet 3] Daniel Kaplan was made the game's producer.


[tweet 4][tweet 5][tweet 6]


Post-cancellation

For unknown reasons, Persson told video gaming blog Joystiq that the project was going to be a first-person shooter.[5]

On 24 June 2025, the Minecraft preservation website Omniarchive released a build of Brickcraft.[6] Kaplan had kept the build on his laptop for over thirteen years.[tweet 7] Persson confirmed he had no backups of any earlier versions of the game.[tweet 8]

Temporary image dump

  • An earlier version of Brickcraft without slope bricks or distance fog
    An earlier version of Brickcraft without slope bricks or distance fog
  • The earlier version
    The earlier version
  • The earlier version
    The earlier version
  • The seecret
    The seecret

References

  1. ↑ "Credits". Minecraft.net. Mojang. 2011. Archived from the original on 23 September 2011.
  2. ↑ a b Crecente, Brian; Vincent, Ethan (December 8, 2020). "Episode 1 – Minecraft" (PDF). Bits N' Bricks (Podcast). Participants: Daniel Mathiasen, Daniel Kaplan, Danny Bergmann, Paal Smith-Meyer, and Ronny Scherer. The LEGO Group. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 1, 2024. Audio version via YouTube.
  3. ↑ "lwjgl IRC logs" (IRC chat logs). 14 May 2009. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014 – via Echelog. 
    [14:10:05] <Dragonene> Notch: what sort of game *is it*?
[...]
[14:11:07] <Notch> the current concept is a cross over between Dwarft Fortress and Infiniminer
[14:11:15] <Dragonene> Notch: I haven't played either :)
[14:11:16] <Notch> I'll try to get a VERY EARLY alpha out this weekend. =)
  4. ↑ "lwjgl IRC logs" (IRC chat logs). 17 May 2009. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014 – via Echelog. 
    [13:10:22] <Dragonene> yep, that's tab closure for me
[13:10:27] <Dragonene> minecraft that is
[13:10:30] <Dragonene> or browser exit I guess.
[...]
[14:07:48] <Dragonene> Sorry to pull you into this discussion Notch_
[14:07:55] <Dragonene> I just want to be able to play it without it crashing on me :D
  5. ↑ Conditt, Jessica (July 26, 2012). "Canceled Mojang project was a first-person shooter". Joystiq. AOL Inc. Archived from the original on 28 July 2012.
  6. ↑ DEJVOSS (26 June 2025). "Brickcraft". Omniarchive. Archived from the original on 9 August 2025. Retrieved 9 August 2025.

Tweets

  1. ↑ Olson, Måns [@MansOlson] (13 April 2014). "I'm Dragonene.7498" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 10 July 2019 – via Twitter.
  2. ↑ Kaplan, Daniel [@Kappische] (16 May 2024). "Dragonene who was one of the first testers of Minecraft in the world, would eventually become the game director of Minecraft Dungeons :D" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 21 October 2024. Retrieved 13 November 2025 – via Twitter. Mirrored via X Cancelled.
  3. ↑ Kaplan, Daniel [@Kappische] (16 May 2024). "But he was hired for another project, one of the main designers/coders of a LEGO game, that never saw the light" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 21 October 2024. Retrieved 13 November 2025 – via Twitter. Mirrored via X Cancelled.
  4. ↑ Persson, Markus [@notch] (5 September 2011). "Secret project Rex Kwon Do begins today! It will involve caffeine and giggling" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2025 – via Twitter.
  5. ↑ Persson, Markus [@notch] (12 September 2011). "Had to spend today on Project Rex Kwon Do. 12 hours of work later, and the prototype is packaged and done. I will now wash my hands of this" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2025 – via Twitter.
  6. ↑ Persson, Markus [@notch] (5 December 2011). "In other news, looks like Project Rex Kwon Do got greenlit! :D :D :D :D" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2025 – via Twitter.
  7. ↑ Kaplan, Daniel [@Kappische] (28 June 2025). "I've had it on my laptop for over 13 years 😂" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 9 August 2025. Retrieved 9 August 2025 – via Twitter. Mirrored via Nitter.
  8. ↑ Persson, Markus [@notch] (28 June 2025). "You assume I do backups. You flatter me" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 9 August 2025. Retrieved 9 August 2025 – via Twitter. Mirrored via Nitter.
Retrieved from "https://wiki.researchrealm.net/index.php?title=Brickcraft&oldid=10125"