Minecraft's creator, Notch, has revealed his newest commercial game (sort of), Cliffhorse, in the process giving cryptocurrency Dogecoin its biggest platform yet (sort of).

Cliffhorse gives players control of a horse on a cliff, and gives them a horse-sized ball to push around which uses the same skin as the horse. That's… pretty much it. It is a very silly game.

"The entire thing is a joke," explains Markus Persson, better known as Notch, the creator of Minecraft. "It's about two hours of work in Unity, using standard and free assets. But maybe being a joke is ok?"

"The game started out with me hanging out in PewGeminiLive's livestream of a blind Skyrim playthrough, where I kept referring to the game as Cliffhorse because of the sometimes funny horse physics. People in the chat asked me to make that game, I said sure, and a couple of hours later, Cliffhorse was done. It's basically Big Rigs, but there's a ball, and you're a horse."



But Notch, put the game on Twitter, he also asked users who want "early access" to the game to send him Dogecoin.

Buy Cliffhorse "early access" by sending Dogecoin here DMbE53XpM3RR4cnHnVoTPZzjBUwHogdYBe then downloading here http://t.co/dBagZctq3w — Markus Persson (@notch) June 7, 2014

"I was going to just release it to the people in the chat, but by the time the game was done, the stream had stopped," Notch said, "so I made a joke about 'early access' and accepted payments through Dogecoin, a crypto currency that has a definite joking edge to it. All the things referenced are things I love, and things that take things a little less than serious."



Gamers don't have to send Notch Dogecoin to play Cliffhorse, but enough people have that he has received more than $100 in donations – which makes it his first commercial game since Minecraft was released in 2009. It went on to sell more than 35m copies across all platforms.

"Somehow, my first commercial game after Minecraft ended up being Cliffhorse. Hopefully that will take some pressure off my next game," Notch added.

Taking voluntary donations for a joke game is hardly a killer role for Dogecoin, but it underlines its reputation as the fun cryptocurrency.

Unlike bitcoin, whose supporters are increasingly likely to be working for a Wall Street bank or preparing to declare themselves immune from the government, Dogecoin's fanbase seems to be mostly made up of people who like the idea of doing things like sponsoring a Nascar driver, sending the Jamaican bobsleigh team to the olympics, or just paying a video game developer a few cents for a ridiculous game about horses and cliffs.

• Minecraft – 36 times larger on PS4 and Xbox One