Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson gave some of his Twitter followers a bit of a shock yesterday evening with a link to his newest project, Mars Effect.  April Fools!

At the end of the Mars Effect webpage “© April 1 2012 Mojang” made the more gullible of Notch’s fans facepalm at their own naivety.

On the news section of the webpage, Notch wrote:

After several weeks of trying to come up with a good name for the game, we finally decided not to learn from previous experiences and pick a name that’s already kind of in use by a huge existing franchise.

After playing around with names like “Elight,” “Wind Commander,” and “Steve Online,” we finally settled on the very catchy name “Mars Effect”.

Mars Effect‘s gameplay features also raised a few laughs, including “an ending that actually makes sense” which pertains to both Mass Effect 3‘s ending and perhaps Minecraft’s bizarre end credits.

Notch has previously hinted that he had been considering developing a space-based game, but that may have been part of the April Fools joke too.

We’re sure that this won’t be the last gaming-related April Fools joke to emerge today. Let us know below if any others catch you out!