Minecraft Dev Releases Surprise Free Game on Steam

Since its success with Minecraft, Mojang has worked on a limited number of other projects. The latest, Crown and Council, is the creation of one member of the studio's staff, and it's now available on PC for free.

Here's how the Mojang blog describes Crown and Council: "It's ... a fast-paced strategy game about conquering land and obliterating rival monarchs. Click adjacent land tiles to subdue them with your army, earning gold to fund further expeditions, defensive forts, naval attacks, universities and more. Muscle your opposition off the map! There can be only one ruler in these lands!

"It's simple to play, but not quite so easy to win: do you spend all your cash on universities, hoping to survive long enough that your book-learnin' makes you unstoppable in the late game? Or do you go for a quick land-grab, hoping to put enough boots on the ground to give you an irreversible early advantage?"

The game was created by a single member of Mojang's staff, Henrik Pettersson. It uses a procedural-generation system to create maps; there are 75 that come with the game, and more can be created if need be.

You can download Crown and Council for free from Steam now. The system requirements are extremely modest, and it requires only 300 MB of free space.