The java version of Minecraft is still out there doin’ its thing over 10 years later, and for this year’s April Fools’ Day developer Mojang has added more than two billion dimensions to the game’s portal system, as part of what it calls “Snapshot 20w14∞.” It’s not quiet as all encompassing as the below trailed makes it sound, but two billion dimensions is still two billion dimensions, no matter how you slice it.
In its very, uh, expressive announcement post, Mojang claims that 20w14-Infinite (I’m not copying and pasting that symbol every time, sorry Mojang) contains “every imaginable reality” possible, at least within the confines of Minecraft. Here’s how it works: Throw a book into any regular ol’ Nether portal you’ve got lying around, and said portal will then take you to one of two billion possible dimensions, based on the contents of the book. You can also use a new command, “/warp TKTKTK,” where “TKTKTK” is any string of words, to accomplish the same thing, but that kinda takes the majesty out of the whole thing, doesn’t it?
While most of the worlds are procedurally generated based on the text written inside the book — a proc-gen system called “seeding” that’s been around for ages — some words lead to dimensions with hand-crafted outcomes. A book that contains the word “llama,” for instance, will send the player to a world full of tiny houses that each contain one llama. A book containing the word “credits” will send the player to a world where Minecraft‘s full credits have been built out of floating blocks. It remains to be seen just how many special words like these there are, but industrious Minecraft players (Miners? Crafters? Mojanglians?) on YouTube and Reddit have already begun cataloging the best ones.
Mojang doesn’t tend to let its April Fools’ Snapshots hang around for too long, so it remains to be seen if 20w14-Infinite will still be available once April 2 has overtaken the entire globe. (Officially, at least. Minecraft people store local backups of almost everything, which means you can still get your hands on stuff like last year’s “Minecraft 3D” April Fools’ gag if you look hard enough.)
Seems like a real shame though, to have spent the time building a cool new system with this many possibilities, only to remove it from the game after a mere 24 hours. Something like this is practically begging to take over Twitch for a couple of weeks, right? I can totally see some big-name streamer taking word suggestions from their chat, or chucking famous lines from Harry Potter books into portals to see what happens.
Since 20w14-Infinite is only available for the java version of Minecraft, players on the Windows Store version of Minecraft are out of luck, as are those who mine/craft on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, in VR, or on Raspberry Pi. For those people, I recommend getting your hands on the rare PlayStation classic LSD: Dream Emulator, which is sort of the same idea, but with less building and more existential terror.
