The mighty 0.16 update has landed on Pocket and Windows 10 (read all about it here!) bringing with it our first implementation of Add-Ons! They’re a new way for you to customise your Minecraft world, allowing you to poke around in the guts of the game and tweak the way mobs look and behave.

Want to create an army of chicken-riding, explosive witches? Who doesn’t? And now you can.

But… But how?!

Luckily we have smart dudes Jason Major and Jared Greiner on hand to show you the ropes, or, more accurately, the json files. They sat down to play through the Alien Invasion Add-On we teased at E3 earlier this year, to show you some of the cool things you can do by messing about with mobs:

And, for those who want to have a crack at making an Add-On themselves, Jared and Jason also made this tutorial video, showing in detail how they melded a skeleton with a rabbit to create a loyal ally, to help defend against the extraterrestrial menace:

We’ve made the Alien Invasion Add-On available for you to download from our special Add-Ons page. You can find loads more info on how Add-Ons work and what you need to do to install them. We also asked the excellent Sethbling to make an Add-On for us, in collaboration with Mindcrack and Blockworks. It’s pretty darn cool: a massive siege battle in which you can take part, joining either the ravenous horde of mobs or the stout defenders of the keep. Get a glimpse of it in this short teaser video, or download it from the Add-Ons page and see for yourself - you can even share it with friends over Realms!

Add-Ons are a work in progress, our first step towards bringing higher levels of customisation to all our platforms - so they’re likely to change and evolve over time. Let us know what you think!

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies