Telltale Games, the makers of award-winning titles such as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, is indeed making a Minecraft animated series, coming in 2015. Minecraft, the massive user-generated sandbox game that has become a cultural phenomenon, has been known for not just it’s gameplay mechanics but for it’s simplified visual charm and established lore from developer and user alike. It has been the source for a new kind of nerdy enjoyment, from conventions and cosplay to music covers such as “Let it Blow”. With Telltale Games developing a new series, we are in for an engaging, enjoyable story-telling experience.

Here’s an official synopsis from Mojang’s blog:

In other news, we’re collaborating with Telltale Games to create Minecraft: Story Mode! Here are some bullet points to celebrate!

• Minecraft: Story mode will be a narrative-driven video game created by Telltale Games. It will be about Minecraft.
• Mojang is collaborating with Telltale and members of the community to make Minecraft: Story Mode as Minecrafty as possible.
• The first episode will be released some time in 2015, and will be available on Xbox consoles, PlayStation consoles, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android-based devices.
• Minecraft: Story Mode will be released episodically, just like The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, or the recent Tales from the Borderlands, which is another developer-collaboration series between Telltale Games and Gearbox Software.
• We’re not intending on creating an “official” story for Steve, or explaining the world of Minecraft in detail. It will be a cool game.
• The Minecraft 2 thing was a joke. No really. It was a joke.

Telltale Games relies on its ability to secure and use licenses to a great extent. The studio has been making games since 2004, and in recent years has been creating stories for others’ properties. 2010 saw the release of Back to the Future: The Game, best described as the fourth movie that never happened; 2011 saw the release of Jurassic Park: The Game, which delves deeper into the incident at Isla Serna and explores a new group of survivors; in 2012, Telltale released The Walking Dead: Season One, a game that has been lauded for its high quality story telling; 2013 saw the release of The Walking Dead: Season 2, and a newcomer, The Wolf Among Us, based on the graphic novel series, Fables, by Bill Willingham; and last month, they released Tales of Borderlands, a game based on the popular loot shooter, Borderlands 2.

Let’s see what they manage to do with Minecraft: Story Mode.