Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen is squealing with delight as he leads his character's blocky form down a narrow, elevated platform that is surrounded by violet flames. He's just discovered a hidden room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even though he's the title's executive producer he's not sure what's about to take place. Through our Discord chat, you can hear his smile.



"This is extremely rare," he says. "This is extremely rare. Okay?" I laugh and inform him that he is excited.



"Yes," he replies, "I haven't seen it in this level. This is so cool. Ok, so we actually have a few spooky and mysterious items in this game. I've discovered something that will prove useful later in the game, or if I go back to the game.



Minecraft Dungeons is an adventure title that was inspired by classic dungeon-crawlers like Diablo or The Binding of Isaac, but with the franchise's patented kid-friendly flair. It has online and local multiplayer with randomly generated levels and hordes of familiar and new enemies, including skeletons, creepers and spiders. The whole experience is very similar to Minecraft, but it represents a innovative approach to game development for Mojang.



Microsoft bought Mojang, the Swedish studio behind Minecraft for $2.5 billion in 2014. Currently, it operates under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella. This doesn't mean Minecraft Dungeons will be exclusive to Microsoft platforms. The full game is scheduled to launch on PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One and Windows on May 26th.



For more than a decade, the company has been focusing on Minecraft the worldwide phenomenon that has introduced generations of youngsters and adults to sandbox style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first real attempt at an entirely new genre, and has been in production for at minimum four years.



The plot is straightforward, yet appropriately epic. A villager from the outcast community called an illager, discovers an orb of power that he uses to invade the world. He has a gang of villagers under his command. The players travel across different areas to battle the Arch-Illager's minions until they come across the orb's holder.



Mojang introduced illagers to its base Minecraft game in 2016, however Nisshagen stated that the creatures were actually created in the Dungeons development room.



"We required an adversary that was humanoid, that could be attacked from a distance, and that had an ability to hunt quickly," he explained. In the end, Nisshagen explained it was possible to just escape the zombies in Minecraft, rather than fighting them in combat, and Dungeons developers wanted something that would encourage combat. "They do pursue you with axes, and then hunt you down, and this was so loved by the Minecraft team that they decided to implement it in that game before we launched Dungeons."



In reality, Dungeons began as an internal concept for the Nintendo 3DS.



"You can't put Minecraft an extremely complex game, on this," Nisshagen said. This is the reason why the developers decided to use a top-down perspective rather than the original game's first-person viewpoint and they concentrated on creating an environment that is full of opportunities for surprise and exploration.



"You can't take the whole Minecraft game," he said. You need to simplify it but keep it simple. We increased exploration and the feeling of adventure. Players should feel like they are in the middle of an adventure. We then take the creativity that Minecraft players have when they create all the awesome stuff in the game. FREHTML5 We attempt to let them use this in our kind of progression system, I suppose is the word."



Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional progression system based on RPGs and it doesn't bind players into specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes, such as "healer" or "tank" in the game, players can change their gear on the fly and mix items to enhance their weapons with any capabilities are needed in the current situation.



Nisshagen stated, "You can think about changing that progression system thought into an sandbox." "There's absolutely no constraints. You can do almost whatever you would like. There are some extremely unwise choices you can make. However, there are also many good choices and strong choices that you can make.



There isn't a wrong method to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is crucial for developers, especially considering the intended audience that Minecraft is aimed at: children and their parents. As an industry, Minecraft is geared toward younger players, whereas dungeon-crawler games are generally built for adults, with dense progression trees and inventories, and tough combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of these market segments.



Nisshagen stated that she believes that parents will play with their children, or older siblings and younger ones. The system is full of depth. Anyone that has a degree of gaming experience can find cool combinations of things to explore from a mechanics standpoint. And then the other people can simply enter and click-mash and have a great time too."



The game has drop-in multiplayer both local and online and each stage adjusts according to the number of players. TNT boxes are the sole exception to friendly fire and can cause harm to both familiars and allies.



Cross-platform play won't be available at launch but it's "absolutely" going to be available in the future, Nisshagen said.



"We're not a large development team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to release the same game on the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows is quite a feat actually. We would like cross-play to be made available in the earliest time possible. But, we want to ensure that we have a great gaming experience on our own platforms first.



In many ways, Minecraft Dungeons is the natural evolution of the Minecraft franchise. For plenty of 2000s kids, Minecraft was the first game they played due to its being accessible, creative and social. Ten years later the same players are hungry for something more challenging and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious answer. It's an old-fashioned, well-known game.


Website: https://frehtml5.co/