Minecraft, the insanely popular sandbox game from Mojang, can be played on an Android Wear smartwatch.
Before you jump straight on to the Google Play Store in search of your 8-bit fix, we must warn you that it isn’t currently officially available.
The above video created by 14 year-old web developer Corbin Davenport shows a playable version of the game on a Samsung Gear Live smartwatch.
Davenport side-loaded the Android mobile version of the game on to his Samsung Gear Live, running Android Wear OS 4.4W, via an APK. Surprisingly, although the version in the video isn’t an official port of the game, it works without needing any modification. Even the scale of the game automatically reduced itself down to fit the Gear Live’s 320 x 320 Super AMOLED screen.
Despite the gear Live’s 1.2 GHz processor being able to handle the game, as the video shows, it proves rather difficult to play mainly because of that small display. The onscreen navigation buttons are consequently hard to press and make essential tasks such as moving about or crafting items incredibly hard.
Still, it hints at the possibilities of the OS, which is currently lacking in gaming options. The only title available on the Google Play Store at present is the minimal Flappy Bird clone Flopsy Droid.
Whether the results will be the same with other Android APKs is difficult to tell at present. At least we are aware of the scale of titles that we could potentially see on wearables in the future.
In terms of actually seeing an official version of Minecraft for Android Wear, the rights now lie with Microsoft and it remains unclear what the tech giant intends to do with the property. Mojang for its part had expanded Minecraft from its original incarnation on the PC to include ports for other platforms such as consoles and mobiles. As a result, its total sales are now thought to be approximately 54 million.
Would you like to play an official Android Wear version of Minecraft on your Android Wear smartwatch? What other existing games would you like to see make their way on to Google’s platform? Let us know in the comments section below.