Minecraft 0.0.000028

One day, as usual, I loaded up Minecraft to play. I did this every single day, and I enjoyed it. Minecraft was my favorite game back them. Little did I know, that was gonna change the same day…

The familiar launcher loaded up. The Combat Update news were there. PvP changes, mobs, The End changes, and more things. However, at the end, it said:& Update 0.0.000028 released!& That intrigued me. I wondered what this “Update 0.0.000028” was. I never saw an announcement for this update, nor any snapshots. I went to change my version, and sure enough, 0.0.000028 was there, waiting to be opened. I was sure that the “- Update 0.0.000028 released!” thing was not there the day before. However, I just shrugged it off and thought that Mojang released the update overnight. Little did I know what was about to come.

I changed my version to the odd 0.0.000028 version and loaded up Minecraft. The familiar Mojang logo appeared for about 4 seconds. Afterwards, the main screen appeared. The usual Minecraft logo in the stone themed font, the moving world background, the splash text being “Now with a plot!”, and the only buttons being “Singleplayer” and “Multiplayer”. Multiplayer was grayed out and impossible to click. And so, the only option left was to click the singleplayer button, which I did.

There was one available world, named “STORY”. The date of creation was one day before the that day. The original name was “”. All other buttons were gray and unclickable. Suddenly, I got second thoughts about this. I just got this chilling feeling about this entire thing. However, I shrugged those thoughts off and loaded the world up.

The familiar brown dirt background only lasted for a second, before I spawned in a small shack made of oak planks. The floor was coated in red carpet, and there were no windows, only a torch. To my surprise, there were players outside, despite this being singleplayer. Many, many players. Every single one looked the same: like Steve. Then, I noticed that there was another player standing in front of me, about 40 blocks away. I noticed that my hand was sweating a little bit. I was creeped out by this weird world. However, I decided to just play along with it.

I walked out of the hut. The players all started hopping up and down at the same time, punching in my direction. The chat filled up with insults. Noob. Ugly. Stupid. Fat. Dumb. Retarded. Horrible. Useless. All of those messages appeared in chat. The weird players were insulting me. At the end of this corridor of entities was another player. He was different though. He also looked like a Steve, but his shirt was red. I just walked forwards until I was close to the other player. Then, out of nowhere he punched me, and my screen cut to black. Police sirens started sounding in the background, and as they faded away, I spawned in another location.

I spawned in another wooden shack. It was identical to the first one - the same carpet, no windows, and one torch. I also noticed that the world was a bit more greyscale. The colors were dulled out and grayish. I moved outside, to find a small town out of identical huts. It consisted of shacks of the same size. Every shack was exactly 3 blocks away from the next one, and the rows of houses stretched out as long as I could see, until they disappeared in the fog around 100 blocks away.

The street was a simple gravel pathway. However, a holographic arrow was pointing to one of the houses. The arrow was dull green with a dirty yellow outline. I walked forwards, following the arrow. Every single house was empty. However, I heard some kind of sobbing coming for the house I was supposed to go in. I walked up to it, turned towards it, and I saw a player. The one that punched me before, with the red shirt. He was sobbing and crying, bluish water pixels dripping from his face.

Mike > What have I done?

Mike > What have I done?

Mike > What have I done?

Mike > What have I done?

Mike > What have I done?

Mike > What have I done?

Mike spammed that message multiple more times in the chat. The tears slowly got less and less pixelated. Soon they were transparent and looked like real water. They formed a puddle on the wooden plank floor.

??? >You have done nothing wrong…

Mike >Stop talking to me!

??? >But I need to…

Mike >STOP PLEASE!

The tears slowly got red. Redder and redder. Red like blood. Mike was crying blood. The sobbing and cries got more intense, louder and louder. The puddle became red. I started sweating a lot. This game was seriously disturbing. Why would Mojang release such a thing? Minecraft was a child friendly game, and this definitely was NOT for kids!

In the meantime, the blood tears turned opaque and thick, forming a gooey puddle on the floor. The sobbing suddenly got choppy and lower pitched, and Mike lowered down into the weird blood puddle and laid down there. I just stared at the screen, chills going down my spine, palms sweaty. After around 5 seconds, the screen changed into the brown dirt background again.

My thoughts were racing. What does this all mean? What did I just witness? Why was he crying blood, and why did it turn into some thick weird liquid later on? And what did the ending mean? So many questions lingered in my mind, yet so little answers appeared…

Suddenly, I spawned somewhere. It was yet another copy-pasted wooden shack, and once again, there were numerous Steves outside. Everything was almost entirely greyscale. But this time, they were already jumping around. The chat was filled with words, but this time they were different. Nutter. Weirdo. Queer. Murdered. Killer. Odd one out. Creep. All those words spammed the chat, and in middle was Mike.

Mike was just standing still, not even his arms swaying. He was just staring forwards, right at me. I could feel his stare, even through my screen. I felt disturbed, almost like I was being watched. His eyes were pitch black, with occasional shades on dark grey flashing across, but quickly turning black again. There were not any pixels in his eyes. It was realistic. Nothing else, just black.

Slowly, the black started oozing out of the eye sockets. It pooled down under his feet, the blacks and grays swirling around like a pool of oil. Out of nowhere, the liquid changed. The oily black thing blinked into a bloody red, thick liquid. Not even the greyscale world changed the color of this liquid. Afterwards, it changed into blue, watery tears, and his eyes turned normal. This blinking and switching carried on for around 30 seconds, before finally stabilizing on the tears. Mike was tearing up, sobbing uncontrollably. He dropped on his knees, covered his eyes with his palms, and just sat there, crying. All while the Steves threw insults at Mike.

The environment suddenly changed, without any dirt background or anything. Now, it was fully greyscale, with a thick fog around 10 blocks in front of me, and a black vignette around the border. Now, my palms were extremely sweaty, and I was scared. On the floor in game, was a droplet of the black liquid. There were more drops of it, creating a trail. I wanted to leave. So desperately. But I also wanted to continue. And as they always say, curiosity kills the cat.

I followed the trail through the gloomy environment. Grey trees without leaves, almost disappearing in the fog. Strange thin poles that disappeared in the sky above. Dead grass. It just looked like a wasteland.

The trail lead me up a small hill, like a mould. I climbed it, when suddenly, the intensity and thickness of the fog decreased, and I got a good view of the area behind the hill.

I screamed on top of my lungs and jumped from my chair.

On the other side was a large tree without leaves. The branches were thick, and in front of the tree was a small clearing, with more trees around it. There was dead grass, withered flowers, and dead animals, rotting and half-decayed. On the tree, were some dead flowers, that looked like they died while blooming. One branch was a little bit lower than the rest. And right there was Mike.

He was just hanging there, his body limp and swaying in the wind. The noose around his neck was connected to the branch. His face was purplish and swollen up, his enlarged tongue popping out of his mouth. Even though this was Minecraft, the pixel eyes seemed glassy. Mike was dead.

Suddenly, the black liquid started leaking out of his mouth. It flowed out, until there was a large puddle of the disgusting black oil under his feet. The liquid flowed away on its own, creeping away into the thick forest around this depressing view.

The background changed to the brown dirt one. The screen changed into the Minecraft front page, with the splash text saying “Congratulations!”. Afterwards, the game crashed.

I stood up, shocked, disturbed, and scared. I was covered in sweat, scared for life. I closed my PC down with my trembling hands, as I sat down on my bed to rethink what I just witnessed. I wanted to think of what was the story of that sick game. As I thought about this experience, the puzzle pieces slowly connected, creating the full story.

When Mike punched me in the beginning, he killed me on accident. He started hating himself because of what he did, and he became depressed. He started imagining things. People started hating him too. And he just couldn’t handle it anymore. Mike committed suicide. But what was that black liquid? And the blood? What did it all mean?

---

After calming down in a few days, I decided to investigate further. I found out that an ex Mojang employee has recently hung himself after battling with depression for a long time. He was 28 at the time of his death.

After emailing Mojang about my disturbing experience, Mojang claimed that they never released any update titled 0.0.000028. They said that some people received that update, but they never released it, and quickly took it down as fast as they could.

Update 0.0.000028 disappeared from my launcher and from my versions folder. I never saw it again.

I never played Minecraft since.

—Written by prism55—