Experimental Gameplay

Experimental Gameplay (also known in-game as Experiments) is a game option exclusive to Bedrock Edition. In Java Edition, experimental features are available behind separate data packs. When enabled, it allows players to test some unfinished or work-in-progress features that will eventually be released in future updates.

Toggling

Experimental Gameplay is found in the world options when creating or editing a world. When turning the option on in an existing world, a copy of the world will be created automatically. Turning the option on disables achievements after the world is created. Once the experimental world is created, it cannot be turned off again. Worlds with the experimental on will have an "Experimental" tag right next to the game mode name in the world menu.

Warnings

The point of Experimental Gameplay is for the player to look at some not-quite-finished features, which could crash, break, or stop working at any point in future updates. When the player attempts to load the experimental world, it will show a warning message before loading it. Attempting to disable experimental gameplay toggle via external tools could also crash and break the world.

It is recommended to create back up copies of the world when playing on experimental, or not enabling experimental toggle on to avoid breaking the world and having issues in future updates.

Features (Bedrock Edition)

There are 8 different toggles of Experimental Gameplay on Bedrock Edition.^[1][2] These are:

Additional content

• "Holiday Creator Features"
  • Enables add-ons features added on the holiday update and some further updates that include the creation of custom blocks and items, Molang enhancements and the run_command method. This toggle will soon be removed from Bedrock Edition entirely, thus breaking add-ons using these features, mostly block and item events.

• "Custom biomes"
  • Enables custom biomes by using add-ons.

• "Upcoming Creator Features"
  • Used for Volume Driven Fog and entity properties and permutations.

• "Beta APIs"
  • Enables the usage for "-beta" versions of API modules in add-on packs.

• "Molang Features"
  • Enables experimental Molang features.

• "Experimental Cameras"
  • Enables the /camera command and its features.

• "Render Dragon Features for Creators"
  • Introducing new experimental cross-platform graphics features for creators

Gameplay

• "Villager Trade Rebalance"
  • Overhauled trades for Villager and Wandering Trader
• "Vanilla Experiments Internal (NON_LOC) (Developer Edition only)"
  • Internal (staff only) experimental features (NON_LOC)
  • Enables the experimental bundle item.

Internal Testing (Developer Edition only)

• "Automated test experiment setting. ignore this please"
  • loc_description MISSING FROM EXPERIMENTS JSON!
• "Next Update (NON_LOC)"
  • the next big update
• "enable experimental text"
  • just a test for whether text is working
• "Allow seed change"
  • Allow changing seed
• "Enable Minecraft Explorer (internal) (NON_LOC)"
  • Load Blocks generated by the Minecraft Explorer (NON_LOC)

Features (Java Edition)

There are two data packs of experimental features on Java Edition:

• "Bundles"
  • Enables the experimental bundle item.
  • While this data pack is selectable during world creation, it will not be found within the datapacks folder of the save.

• "Villager Trade Rebalance"
  • Overhauled trades for Villager and Wandering Trader

History

References