4J Studios – the award-winning developer best known for bringing Mojang’s Minecraft to consoles – has shared details on its next game: Reforj.
Reforj is described as a creative survival sandbox game, and one the studio will develop with a community-focused approach. But no, Reforj is not Minecraft 2.
“Reclaim the future. Rewrite the past. Reforj the world,” reads the Reforj social media account.
“The fact this is coming from 4J means the comparisons to Minecraft are unavoidable,” said Minecraft YouTuber Joseph Garrett, aka Stampy, in an interview with Eurogamer’s sister-site GamesIndustry.biz. Garrett joined 4J earlier this year, working with the developer to bring Reforj to life.
“We’ve already had articles about 4J making Minecraft 2. But that’s not what we’re trying to do,” Garrett continued. “Despite all of us being huge fans of Minecraft, we don’t need to make another one. It already exists.”
4J founder and chairman Chris van der Kuyl added Reforj will offer players a “a very different gameplay experience” to Minecraft.
“That doesn’t mean they will still play the games they play and love every day,” he said. “They will. That’s something we revel in. We still have a marketplace in Minecraft. This is just something brand new for people who love the genre, and we don’t think they’ve had anything new for quite a long time.”
Reforj is being developed in Elements Engine, 4J’s own “proprietary voxel sandbox engine”. The team debuted the engine on YouTube earlier this year, adding it will “harness the incredible power of the newest generation of consoles and graphics cards” (see video above).