Minecraft-style title bound for XBLIG

A game called FortressCraft is bound for Xbox LIVE Indie Games at the end of this week, which bears an uncanny resemblance to indie super-hit Minecraft.

The game is from Projector Games, a small UK indie outfit and will be released across seven chapters on XBLIG, each costing 80MSP. Whilst the first chapter will only enable players to create and build, later chapters will introduce enemies, new materials and machinery.

Projector openly admits that Minecraft is a huge influence, but claims that no copyright is infringed and that Minecraft creator Notch has welcomed games inspired by his hit, which was in itself influenced by games such as Infiniminer.

Nonetheless, comments on the game's website seem to have focused strongly on the parity between the two games - something which Projector defends vociferously.

"I'm really honestly bemused by all the vitriol about 'copying minecraft'," reads an official post on the company blog. "You do all know that Minecraft (creative) is a direct copy of Infiniminer? And that both of those games can clearly and directly trace their routes back to Roblox, Wurm Online, Voxlap, 3d Construction Kit?

"Many of you seem to have come across Minecraft as the first game of this ilk. It's not, it's not even close, not by 20+ years.

"Regardless of that, there's no intellectual property I could be sued over for this. Notch has invented no new technology for this game. I'm not infringing his copyright or trademarks. He himself has said he's happy for clones and remakes and mods and tools."

Projector has bigger plans for FortressCraft than just XBox LIVE, too. The game is planned to roll out on Windows, Mac and Linux - with a possible browser version also posited.

The similarity between FortressCraft and Minecraft will undoubtedly fuel the debate over intellectual property and copyright which has recently surrounded the cases of Lugaru, MaxPlosion and Desktop Dungeons.