So the 1.9 Pre-Release has brought a plethora of fun stuff to the table… everything from NPCs to Snow Golems. But Notch has tweeted today that there will be an all new game mode introduced. Hardcore mode!!! Similar to what it sounds like and what we’ve seen in other games’ hardcore modes – it will bring a whole new meaning to death in Minecraft.

Obviously it’s an optional thing… it doesn’t apply to every game you play, but you can now choose to play Hardcore in addition to normal Survival and Creative modes. Notch has stated that it automatically sets the difficulty level to “Hard” so there’s no playing Hardcore mode on Peaceful.

In some hardcore modes in games you simply lose your character and have to create another, or lose all your items and are forced to start from scratch again… in Hardcore mode in Minecraft you will lose your entire world. Yeah, sounds harsh, right? That’s because it is!! I’m totally ready to give single-player a shot in Hardcore mode and see how long I can last.