Minecraft Earth is holding a special "Mobs at the Park" event in New York, London, and Sydney

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has announced a special event to celebrate the early access release of Minecraft Earth known as "Mobs at the Park." The event will see life-sized statues of interactive mobs pop up in New York City, London, and Sydney. 

The mobs first made an appearance this weekend and will continue to show up for the next two weekends from November 23-24 to November 30 - December 1 at Hudson Yards in New York City, the Queens Walk in London, and Campbell's Cove in Sydney. The pop-ups will be live from 10am-7pm local time in each of the three locations and any players who visit the sptos on these days will be able to see life-sized creations of Minecraft animals including the buttercup covered Moobloom and the Muddy Pig, as well as a new festive Jolly Llama. The statues have scannable QR codes that enable you to play a new adventure built by Minecraft Earth's development team. 

Any players who complete the adventure will receive exclusive access to the Jolly Llama in-game before it's available worldwide this December. "The custom-built experience demonstrates the magic of bringing Minecraft into the real world," Minecraft Earth's creative director Saxs Persson said, "through the power of Microsoft Azure Spatial Anchors and Azure PlayFab technologies, all coming together to create one of the world’s first true augmented reality experiences." 

A special appearance of the AR statues are also set to appear at Hudson Yards in New York City on Black Friday, which takes place on November 29. Once the experience comes to an end, players globally will also be able to get the Jolly Llama to celebrate the festive season. 

It's been a big year for the blocky adventure with Minecraft venturing into the world of augmented reality and reaching its 10-year anniversary. It's pretty magical that we can now see Minecraft animals in the real world, and who doesn't want to meet a festive Llama? 

After some gaming goodies? Stay in the know with these Black Friday game deals 2019

Heather Wald
Senior staff writer

I started out writing for the games section of a student-run website as an undergrad, and continued to write about games in my free time during retail and temp jobs for a number of years. Eventually, I earned an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University, and soon after got my first official role in the industry as a content editor for Stuff magazine. After writing about all things tech and games-related, I then did a brief stint as a freelancer before I landed my role as a staff writer here at GamesRadar+. Now I get to write features, previews, and reviews, and when I'm not doing that, you can usually find me lost in any one of the Dragon Age or Mass Effect games, tucking into another delightful indie, or drinking far too much tea for my own good. 

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