You can read more on what else was announced in the 1.19 Wild Update, however, the main focus of this Minecraft Now were the frogs.

Originally, the Wild Update was going to add both frogs and fireflies. However, thanks to the Minecraft community, Mojang Studios realized that having frogs eat the fireflies wasn’t a good idea. In real life, fireflies are actually poisonous to some frogs!

Instead, frogs will eat tiny slimes, slime balls, and magma cubes. While you can’t tame frogs, you can tame them, lead them, and put tadpoles into buckets. In order to get different variants of the frogs, currently the best way to get them is by bringing a bucket of tadpole to a different temperature biome and letting them grow up there.

There’s also a new set of blocks tied to the frogs: frog lights! A new light source block, the frog light, is dropped when a frog eats a magma cube. Depending on the variant, there are three new colored light blocks in orange, green, and purple!

Axolotls keep up their brand of predator when it comes to tadpoles. Be warned, they will attack and eat tadpoles. However, once your tadpole grows to a frog, they’re safe from harm. At least from an axolotl.

YouTube

In January, it was announced that Minecraft content on YouTube had reached over 1 trillion views. YouTube took time to celebrate and show the history of Minecraft content over the past decade, marking milestones such as multiplayer competitions and minigames, viewership and players going more global, and female Minecraft creators taking the lead!

You can view the timeline and more on YouTube’s website.

Black History Month

With February being Black History Month, Minecraft: Education Edition (MCE) features a bunch of free lessons where students can explore themes like social justice, identity, and civil rights. They’re also able to look into important moments in Black history and the present-day issues.

Offered is the Lessons in Good Trouble, a collection of eight interactive Minecraft worlds and lessons on social movements throughout history. It’s available as a free demo in MCE or through the Minecraft Marketplace.

Lunar New Year

/media/ng/y4/yw/lunar.png In honor of the Lunar New Year, celebrated between January and April, a free adventure map is available on the Minecraft Marketplace during 2022. In The Legend of Nezha, just as the Third Lotus Prince from Chinese folklore protects good and kindness, you’ll fight as Nezha against the evil Dragon King and put your wits to the test against the devious Stone Queen!

Between February 1 and February 7, 2022, you can also collect two free Character Creator items from Minecraft Marketplace: a free tiger mask and a free tiger sweater. There is also a load of paid skin packs and content released on the Marketplace as well!

Download the map here!

Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft Dungeons hit over 15 million players!

In celebration, Minecraft Dungeons will feature the Festival of Frost until February 22. The Tower is now frost-themed, seasonal trials from the Chills and Thrills event will return, and even a free cape!

The next Minecraft Now will be on March 10, 2022, so be sure to stop by again for a recap of the next episode!

You can read more on what else was announced in the 1.19 Wild Update, however, the main focus of this Minecraft Now were the frogs.

Originally, the Wild Update was going to add both frogs and fireflies. However, thanks to the Minecraft community, Mojang Studios realized that having frogs eat the fireflies wasn’t a good idea. In real life, fireflies are actually poisonous to some frogs!

Instead, frogs will eat tiny slimes, slime balls, and magma cubes. While you can’t tame frogs, you can tame them, lead them, and put tadpoles into buckets. In order to get different variants of the frogs, currently the best way to get them is by bringing a bucket of tadpole to a different temperature biome and letting them grow up there.

There’s also a new set of blocks tied to the frogs: frog lights! A new light source block, the frog light, is dropped when a frog eats a magma cube. Depending on the variant, there are three new colored light blocks in orange, green, and purple!

Axolotls keep up their brand of predator when it comes to tadpoles. Be warned, they will attack and eat tadpoles. However, once your tadpole grows to a frog, they’re safe from harm. At least from an axolotl.

YouTube

In January, it was announced that Minecraft content on YouTube had reached over 1 trillion views. YouTube took time to celebrate and show the history of Minecraft content over the past decade, marking milestones such as multiplayer competitions and minigames, viewership and players going more global, and female Minecraft creators taking the lead!

You can view the timeline and more on YouTube’s website.

Black History Month

With February being Black History Month, Minecraft: Education Edition (MCE) features a bunch of free lessons where students can explore themes like social justice, identity, and civil rights. They’re also able to look into important moments in Black history and the present-day issues.

Offered is the Lessons in Good Trouble, a collection of eight interactive Minecraft worlds and lessons on social movements throughout history. It’s available as a free demo in MCE or through the Minecraft Marketplace.

Lunar New Year

/media/ng/y4/yw/lunar.png In honor of the Lunar New Year, celebrated between January and April, a free adventure map is available on the Minecraft Marketplace during 2022. In The Legend of Nezha, just as the Third Lotus Prince from Chinese folklore protects good and kindness, you’ll fight as Nezha against the evil Dragon King and put your wits to the test against the devious Stone Queen!

Between February 1 and February 7, 2022, you can also collect two free Character Creator items from Minecraft Marketplace: a free tiger mask and a free tiger sweater. There is also a load of paid skin packs and content released on the Marketplace as well!

Download the map here!

Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft Dungeons hit over 15 million players!

In celebration, Minecraft Dungeons will feature the Festival of Frost until February 22. The Tower is now frost-themed, seasonal trials from the Chills and Thrills event will return, and even a free cape!

The next Minecraft Now will be on March 10, 2022, so be sure to stop by again for a recap of the next episode!

One Sentence Summary

Pokemon Snap but with dogs.

Official Summary

Put your love for pups to the test – we have a bunch of dogs that need their photos taken, doggone it! Photograph and catalogue the finest (and derpiest) dogs to build your career, upgrade your camera, and discover new canines. WOOF!

Developer

Sundae Month

Publisher

Kitfox Games

Genre

Singleplayer, Indie, Adventure

One Sentence Summary

What a throwback for a throwing disc!

Official Summary

The best flying disc game of all time is back! With amazing hand-drawn graphics, crazy new moves, gameplay mechanics and awesome new characters and stages, Windjammers 2 is the sequel you’ve been dreaming of.

25 years later, throwing flying discs at your opponents is still as cool as back in the days. Sequel to the NEOGEO cult classic Windjammers, Windjammers 2 is the perfect mix between what you loved about the classic title and brand-new mechanics.

Developer

Dotemu

Publisher

Dotemu

Genre

Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Sports, Indie

One Sentence Summary

Don’t let your FBI agent see this.

Official Summary

Get access to all three games in the World of Assassination trilogy. Embark on a globetrotting adventure and become Agent 47 in the ultimate spy-thriller story across more than 20 locations.

Unleash your creativity, track down your targets and enjoy unparalleled freedom of choice in meticulously detailed sandbox locations around the world.

Developer

IO Interactive A/S

Publisher

IO Interactive A/S

Genre

Singleplayer, Action, Stealth

One Sentence Summary

Perhaps a commentary on capitalism?

Official Summary

Reaping souls of the dead and punching a clock might get monotonous but it’s honest work for a Crow. The job gets lively when your assigned soul is stolen and you must track down a desperate thief to a realm untouched by death – where creatures grow far past their expiry and overflow with greed and power.

Developer

Acid Nerve

Publisher

Devolver Digital, Special Reserve Games

Genre

Singleplayer, RPG

One Sentence Summary

Unique art style matched with a unique idea.

Official Summary

Transform from a featureless nobody into a SLUG, a GHOST, a DRAGON, and MORE in this new take on Action RPGs from the creators of Guacamelee!

Complete quests to discover and swap between 15+ varied and distinct Forms. Mix and match abilities in unexpected ways to unlock and complete even MORE challenging quests. Explore a vast overworld – on your own or with a friend online – while clearing shape-shifting dungeons in an effort to stop The Calamity and SAVE THE WORLD!

Developer

Drinkbox Studios

Publisher

Drinkbox Studios

Genre

Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Dungeon Crawling RPG

One Sentence Summary

One of the writers loves run on sentences and can’t stop writing a sentence, even if it’s already ended long, long ago.

Official Summary

Hope’s Peak Academy is home to Japan’s best and brightest high school students—the beacons of hope for the future. But that hope suddenly dies when Makoto Naegi and his classmates find themselves imprisoned in the school, cut off from the outside world and subject to the whims of a strange, murderous little bear named Monokuma. He pits the students against each other, promising freedom to anyone who can murder a fellow classmate and get away with it.

It’s up to you to find out who Monokuma really is, and why you’ve been taken from the world you once knew. But be careful what you wish for—sometimes there’s nothing more deadly than the truth…

Developer

Spike Chunsoft

Publisher

Spike Chunsoft

Genre

Singleplayer, Visual Novel, Adventure

One Sentence Summary

‘60s sci-fi meets modern game mechanics.

Official Summary

The Anacrusis is a four-player, cooperative first-person shooter set aboard a massive starship stranded at the edge of explored space. Team up with your friends in an infinitely-replayable fight against alien hordes to unlock perks, weapons, and new ways to play that you can share with your team! The Anacrusis is launching in Game Preview in January 2022!

Developer

Stray Bombay

Publisher

Stray Bombay

Genre

Multiplayer, First-person shooter, Indie

One Sentence Summary

Spelunking runs in the family.

Official Summary

Spelunky returns in this greatly-expanded sequel to the original roguelike platformer! Meet the next generation of explorers as they find themselves on the Moon, searching for treasure and missing family. Spelunky 2 builds upon the unique, randomized challenges that made the original a classic, offering a huge adventure designed to satisfy players old and new. Explore the game alone, play locally with up to four players, or, for the first time, join up with friends online to unravel its mysteries together (or battle it out in competitive Arena modes).

Developer

Derek Yu

Publisher

Mossmouth

Genre

Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Platformer, Roguelike

One Sentence Summary

Time loops are wonky things.

Official Summary

Welcome to the Space Program!

You’re the newest recruit of Outer Wilds Ventures, a fledgling space program searching for answers in a strange, constantly evolving solar system.

What lurks in the heart of the ominous Dark Bramble? Who built the alien ruins on the Moon? Can the endless time loop be stopped? Answers await you in the most dangerous reaches of space.

Developer

Mobius Digital

Publisher

Annapurna Interactive

Genre

Singleplayer, Action-adventure

One Sentence Summary

Let’s continue to ignore the 4th game.

Official Summary

One person is all that stands between humanity and the greatest threat it’s ever faced. Relive the legend of Commander Shepard in the highly acclaimed Mass Effect trilogy with the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Includes single-player base content and over 40 DLC from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 games, including promo weapons, armors, and packs – remastered and optimized for 4K Ultra HD.

Developer

BioWare

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Genre

Singleplayer, Action RPG

One Sentence Summary

Live out your hero dreams without getting burned.

Official Summary

Team up with friends to become the most über firefighters money can buy. Rush into burning buildings filled with dangerous hazards, valuables, and top-of-the-line security systems. Fight fires, save lives, salvage goods, and make life-changing money. Buy high tech tools with advanced upgrades, and fresh outfits that unlock new ways to play.

There’s plenty of fire to go around! Play by yourself or join a response crew of up to 4 players online, with dynamic difficulty that adapts to the size of your team.

Developer

Muse Games

Publisher

Curve Games

Genre

Multiplayer, Action, Simulation

One Sentence Summary

Puzzles of art are always winners.

Official Summary

Gorogoa is an elegant evolution of the puzzle genre, told through a beautifully hand-drawn story designed and illustrated by Jason Roberts.

The gameplay of Gorogoa is wholly original, comprised of lavishly illustrated panels that players arrange and combine in imaginative ways to solve puzzles. Impeccably simple, yet satisfyingly complex.

Developer

Buried Signal

Publisher

Annapurna Interactive

Genre

Singleplayer, Indie, Puzzle

One Sentence Summary

If Pirates of the Caribbean was only a romantic drama.

Official Summary

Olija is a game about Faraday’s quest, a man shipwrecked then trapped in the mysterious country of Terraphage. Armed with a legendary harpoon, he and other castaways try to leave this hostile country to return to their homelands.

Through adventurous exploration, narration and razor sharp combat, the player will discover a strange world and its inhabitants, including Olija, an enigmatic lady that Faraday finds himself bound to over time. Inspired by swashbuckling tales and cinematic adventure games, Olija is a story about facing the unknown in adversity.

Developer

Skeleton Crew Studio, Thomas Olsson

Publisher

Devolver Digital

Genre

Singleplayer, Indie, Fantasy

One Sentence Summary

The artist’s version of a walking simulator.

Official Summary

The Pedestrian is a 2.5D side scrolling puzzle platformer. You are The Pedestrian! Enter into a dynamic 3D world with stunning graphics and challenging puzzles.

You play by rearranging and reconnecting public signs in order to explore and advance through each engaging environment.

Developer

Skookum Arts

Publisher

Skookum Arts

Genre

Singleplayer, Puzzle platformer