--- title: "We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?" –... description: 4J Studios, the Scottish firm behind Minecraft's console ports, is developing Reforj — its own sandbox crafting game built on a custom voxel engine called the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: "We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?" – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles | daily.dev og:description: 4J Studios, the Scottish firm behind Minecraft's console ports, is developing Reforj — its own sandbox crafting game built on a custom voxel engine called the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/dL1FXIPVw.png og:image:alt: "We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?" – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # "We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?" – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles **[GamesIndustry.biz](https://daily.dev/sources/gamesindustry)** · 11 min read · 1 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary 4J Studios, the Scottish firm behind Minecraft's console ports, is developing Reforj — its own sandbox crafting game built on a custom voxel engine called the Elements Engine. After Microsoft began pulling Minecraft development in-house around 2019, 4J started building the engine from scratch with two core goals: stable 60fps performance during heavy destruction and native controller support. The engine supports 660 block shapes and a sculpting tool for high-fidelity builds, far beyond Minecraft's 1x1 blocks. Reforj features finite 4km planetoid worlds, a circuit system with logic gates (players have already built Space Invaders in it), and an optional narrative involving two civilizations. Minecraft YouTuber Stampy (Joe Garrett) joined the design team and contributed the Aura energy system. The studio isn't aiming to replace Minecraft but believes the genre has room for multiple titles, pointing to Hytale's recent launch as evidence. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@carsonstricker** · 0 upvotes > Not a fan of the game's visuals so far. Hopefully the textures improve along with the player models. It's cool that they're trying something on their own though! ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Reforj developer 4J Studios unveils Rixels: modified pixels that reduce texture memory requirements by 98%](https://daily.dev/posts/reforj-developer-4j-studios-unveils-rixels-modified-pixels-that-reduce-texture-memory-requirements--hwts7nn9m) · GamesIndustry.biz · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Channel 3 Entertainment on Creating the Open World Game Foundry](https://daily.dev/posts/channel-3-entertainment-on-creating-the-open-world-game-foundry-tohee9iq2) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"\"We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?\" – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw"},"datePublished":"2026-07-15T14:30:02.560Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:03:04.648Z","description":"4J Studios, the Scottish firm behind Minecraft's console ports, is developing Reforj — its own sandbox crafting game built on a custom voxel engine called the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/515f2c0b1ac509ad3ec1fcf8e4db1cac?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/515f2c0b1ac509ad3ec1fcf8e4db1cac?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"GamesIndustry.biz","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"GamesIndustry.biz","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/be1a78592d5340248e5204f8007b82be","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/gamesindustry"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"game-development","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"GamesIndustry.biz","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/gamesindustry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"\"We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?\" – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-well-how-would-we-reinvent-this-wheel-minecraft-specialists-4j-studios-on-building-dl1fxipvw","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Not a fan of the game’s visuals so far. Hopefully the textures improve along with the player models. It’s cool that they’re trying something on their own though!","datePublished":"2026-07-16T21:16:46.505Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/dL1FXIPVw#c-ZBW4oUOjK","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Carson Stricker","url":"https://daily.dev/carsonstricker","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocLHKMxVeUyEPRBm8-x7IrRrB72aJ3KjGS3i3TYJljH1Q5ie7pU=s96-c"}}]} ```