2023 has been another huge year for Minecraft – and in case you missed anything, here’s our look back on the important events and news that the Minecraft community has experienced in the last year!
JANUARY
January saw the announcement of a release date for Minecraft Legends, the latest spin-off in the franchise! It was here that the 18th April release was confirmed for every major platform and we knew when we’d finally be able to get our hands on a copy. Seems like ages ago now!
The run-up to Minecraft version 1.20 also included the first announcement of the new armour trims feature, which would allow a huge number of different patterns to be added to armour items in many different colours – a level of customisation previously unavailable to armour gear. Anyone playing the Java snapshot version could, of course, play them immediately!
FEBRUARY
A minor update to the Bedrock Edition kicked off February with the release of version 1.19.60. It fixed over 70 bugs and added a bunch of new experimental features, including mob sounds in note blocks, piglin heads blocks, and all craftable bamboo blocks. Did you see any of those at the time? If not, remember to enable experimental gameplay features on a throwaway world so you can experience the newest updates in advance!
The news for version 1.20 also came thick and fast, with the addition of the cherry blossom biome, sniffers – the mob vote winner from the previous Minecraft Live – and the official announcement of the archaeology features which were first hinted at as far back as July 2021 as part of version 1.18 before being put on hold.
MARCH
There was big news for Minecraft fans on the PlayStation in March as Dungeons got its first outing as a PS+ exclusive, meaning that for the whole month those with a PS+ subscription could get the game for free if – for some reason – they didn’t already own it!
Version 1.20 also received its official name – Trails & Tales – putting an end to rumours that had persisted for months! According to the Minecraft website, the name represented “the journey that Minecraft takes us on, and the unique stories that each of us bring back”. It wasn’t quite ready to be played in March, though – but the naming was a sign that it was moving ever closer to release.
Meanwhile, if you or a family member owned a Chromebook laptop PC, y
