If you were searching for today's oddest news, I dare say you've found it. Snail Games announced yesterday that it is working on a hybrid of ARK: Survival Evolved and Minecraft known as "PixARK." The Chinese game developer and publisher launched ARK: Survival Evolved Online earlier this year, and is also developing the VR experience ARK Park, so this isn't the most surprising news, but it is still interesting to see that Snail Games is using the ARK IP for a voxel-based sandbox.

PixARK is intended to be "a complete reproduction" of the ARK series' core gameplay, including taming all manner of dinosaurs and using them as mounts, combined with "unlimited creative elements" that are made possible by making use of a voxel-based world. Snail Games hopes that it will appeal to a younger audience than ARK, much like Minecraft does.

Interestingly, the game will make use of an "ecological chain" of sorts. Players can destroy, gather, or kill anything in the game. Gathering too much of a resource will result in resource depletion. Various actions could lead to climate anomalies. Mining could wake "sleeping prehistoric creatures." There are a number of effects that players could have on the world at large.

Features such as dyeing items and some manner of reconstruction and restoration that Google Translate did not translate properly are also mentioned. Snail Games' overall goal is to allow players to affect the world on a grand scale.

PixARK is expected to launch globally sometime in the first half of 2017.