Building on the foundations of a globally recognised IP, Minecraft Blast combines one of the world’s best-selling games brands with one of mobile’s biggest studios.

The blast-style puzzle game is being developed by King of Candy Crush fame, meanwhile Minecraft’s Mojang is bringing knowledge of the IP and overseeing how it's represented in the casual, combat-free format.

The latter isn’t providing programmers or getting involved in coding, but is hands-on at the design phase, helping translate Minecraft elements to the mobile format.

To learn more about the new game’s development progress, we visit King’s London headquarters just ahead of its second regional testing phase. We play the first dozen levels, test out boosters and building mechanics, and speak with King executive producer of new games Gavin Lammin alongside Mojang creative director Magnus Nedfors.

"We're wanting to spread the love of Minecraft to new areas and so we're trying to make games that appeal to a very broad group: the very broad group we call ‘everyone’. You should be able to play Minecraft wherever you are and whenever you want to," Nedfors begins.

He shares that Mojang has been looking to release a mobile-first Minecraft game for a long time, therefore. Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard - which included subsidiary King - has finally helped make this possible.

"The acquisition took quite some time for various reasons, but when it was about to come through, it was like: the day that goes through we want to talk to King," says Nedfors.

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