A scene from Minecraft gaming platform. Source: Lancaster UniversityThanks to a team of developers at Lancaster University working in conjunction with Microsoft, students will soon be able to merge the worlds of literature and gaming.

Meant to encourage an interest in literature, the developers have created a video game using the Minecraft platform where they can bring to life literary classics.

Called LITCRAFT, gamers can recreate scale models of the islands from literary classics such as "Treasure Island" or "Lord of the Flies." The game allows players to interact with locations throughout the island landscape, completing activities as they move around the islands. Likewise, students can also recreate the landscape of the island, imagining how the story might be impacted based on any changes made to the landscape.

Tying the game to literature will let students concentrate on themes such as orienteering, re-enacting narratives and selecting and developing routes, just to name a few of the possibilities.

"We have created an educational model that connects the imaginative spatial experience of reading the text to an immersive experience in the game world," said professor Sally Bushell lead researcher and Head of Lancaster University's English and Creative Writing Department. "It then returns to the text with a new understanding through experience. This is very exciting for us and it far exceeds our expectations for making our research work accessible to the public around the world."

"The resource is proving very popular with schools and libraries and the first created world of Treasure Island is the flagship project in the launch of literature as a new field on Minecraft.edu," she added.