After stepping back as lead designer of Minecraft earlier this year, Notch has been considering what to do next. Right now he's working on a little roguelike called MiniTale, but he has bigger plans for the summer. While he's still deciding exactly what he wants to work on, he told us that he'd quite like to do a sandbox space trading game like Elite, "except done right."

Notch is aiming for something with a bit more character than the classic trading sim. Instead of being the spaceship, you'd be a character inside the spaceship. "I want the space game that's more like Firefly," he said. "I want to run around on my ship and have to put out a fire. Like, oh crap, the cooling system failed, I have to put out the fire here."

"The goal is to do it the same way I did Minecraft," he added. "Just basically have me work on it for a while, and then we'll add people as needed, and try to charge as soon as possible, because it's probably going to be open ended sandbox game as well, so it doesn't need to be completed before people can play it."

He hasn't decided to make the game yet, and doesn't mind if someone else takes up the reins. "if someone steals the idea before me, that's totally fine. I just want to play that game," he said.

A sandbox space trading game that crosses Elite with Firefly. Sounds good, no?