Minecraft: Story Mode

Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic interactive comedy-drama point-and-click graphic adventure video game. It was released as a number of episodes similar to Telltale Games' other games. Players can collect items, solve puzzles, and talk to non-player characters through conversation trees to learn about the story and determine what to do next. Decisions that the player makes affect events in both the current episode and later episodes.

However, Minecraft: Story Mode is intended to be a family-friendly title, unlike Telltale's previous games, which tend to carry more mature or emotional overtones (including the deaths of major characters). As such, the decisions are intended to be pivotal and emotional but not to involve mature imagery or themes. Elements of crafting and building were included in the gameplay which are central to Minecraft. Combat and other action sequences are present in the game, carried out through both quick time events and more arcade-like controls, such as steering around debris on a road.

Minecraft: Story Mode takes place in an interpretation of the world of Minecraft, known as the "Overworld", where it is the extent of the characters' universe, and the characters are unaware that they are in a game. The main character, Jesse, is an inexperienced resident of said universe who sets out on a journey with their friends to find the Order of the Stone (Gabriel the Warrior, Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer, Magnus the Rogue, Soren the Architect, and Ivor the Potion Brewer and Enchanter), five legendary adventurers who saved the Minecraft world in the past. The game includes settings that are normally difficult to access from within Minecraft, such as the Nether and the End.

The game's protagonist and playable character is Jesse, whose appearance can be customized by the player; six character models are available to choose from, featuring different genders, skin tones, and clothing. Jesse is voiced by Patton Oswalt if male and by Catherine Taber if female. Other main characters within the Minecraft: Story Mode world include Jesse's friends Petra (voiced by Ashley Johnson), Axel (Brian Posehn), Olivia (Martha Plimpton, Natasha Loring), Lukas (Scott Porter), and Jesse's pet pig, Reuben (Dee Bradley Baker).

The idea for Minecraft: Story Mode came around the end of 2012 when Telltale Games was engaged in work for Tales from the Borderlands, an episodic series based on the Borderlands series. The idea of developing stories around other established video game franchises led the team to brainstorm the idea for a Minecraft-related game, given that Minecraft: Story Mode was essentially a "blank canvas" for storytelling, according to Job Stauffer, and would create an interesting challenge. The two groups recognized the amount of fan-generated narrative content that existed in the way of YouTube videos and other media forms that demonstrated the potential for storytelling. Many on Telltale's staff were also already fans of Minecraft, with a private server that they played on, with some of the incidents that occurred on there becoming ideas for the story.

Telltale began negotiations with Mojang in early 2013 and began work on the title shortly thereafter. Stauffer noted that Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang was not a factor in the development, as their interaction with Mojang began well before Microsoft's negotiations.

Minecraft: Story Mode received "mixed" from critics, with the Nintendo Switch version earning a weighted average of 67 based on 5 critics.

"Episode 1: The Order of the Stone" received positive reviews. Aggregating review website Metacritic gave the Windows version 71/100 based on 25 reviews, the PlayStation 4 version 71/100 based on 23 reviews and the Xbox One version 77/100 based on 13 reviews. On GameRankings, a score of 78.59% was given based on 11 reviews for the Xbox One version, 77.50% for Wii U based on 4 reviews, 73.53% for the PC version based on 16 reviews, and 73.29% for PlayStation 4 based on 21 reviews.