Mojang's got some slick moves.

The gaming studio behind Minecraft not only announced but also released a surprise game called Crown and Council.

There's more to Mojang's surprise too. It's free! And impressively enough, all it took to make the game was the efforts of a lone "Mojangsta," Henrik Pettersson.

That's right. One game, made by one man, announced and released in one day.

Crown and Council, however, isn't entirely unique on its own. In fact, it looks very much like an older, pixelated version of a few other games such as Risk or Civilization. But beyond its cutesy 16-bit style of pixel art and MIDI sound effects that harken back to the days of the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis, Crown and Council is still a challenging strategy game.

Crown and Council revolves around the geopolitical drama of conquering kingdoms. Players must build, expand, develop their kingdoms, all while defending them and conquering those of their foes.

Naturally, gold is used as the digital monetary currency of funding a kingdom's growth and expansion, building forts, forwarding naval attacks, even building universities to further upgrade one's lands.

There's a lot going on in the seemingly small and outdated-looking game, and it seems like it's quite an easy game to pick up but a difficult one to win.

"It's simple to play, but not quite so easy to win: do you spend all your cash on universities, hoping to survive long enough that your book-learnin' makes you unstoppable in the late game? Or do yo go for a quick land-grab, hoping to put enough boots on the ground to give you an irreversible early advantage?" Mojang shares in its announcement of Crown and Council.

The game relies on procedural generation for its 75 included maps. The map generator is actually built into the game as well, so players can create their own maps on the fly. As a result, Crown and Council should provide for some long-lasting, old-school-like gameplay.

Available on Steam, Crown and Council is free to download and plays on just about any modern day machine with 1 GB of RAM and at least 300 MB of available storage space.

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