Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen grins with delight as he leads his blocky character down the narrow, elevated platform that is covered in violet flames. He's just discovered a secret room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even though he's the title's executive producer he doesn't know what's about to take place. Through our Discord chat you can hear his smile.



"This is super rare," he says. "This is very rare. OK?" I laugh and inform my friend that he's happy.



"Yes," he replies, "I haven't seen it in this level. This is amazing. Okay, so we have a few very spooky and mysterious items here. I've just gathered something that will prove extremely, very helpful to me later in the game, or should I decide to play the game again."



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 style. It offers online and local multiplayer with randomly generated levels and a myriad of brand new and familiar enemies, including skeletons, spiders, and creepers. The entire game appears a lot like Minecraft however, it is a new approach to game development for Mojang.



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



For more than a decade, Mojang has been focused on Minecraft, the world-wide phenomenon that's introduced generations of children and adults to sandbox-style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first real attempt at a new genre, and it's been in development for at least four years.



The story is simple but appropriately epic. An outcast villager, known as an illager, stumbles upon an orb of power that is used to infiltrate the world. He has a force of illagers under his command. Players traverse different areas, fighting the arch-illager's minions until they finally meet with the orb-holder.



Mojang introduced illagers into the base Minecraft game in the year 2016, however Nisshagen stated that the creatures actually began in the Dungeons development room.



"We required an adversary that was humanoid, that had a ranged attack and a fast-follow hunting mechanism," he explained. After all, Nisshagen said it was possible to escape the zombies in Minecraft, rather than fighting them, and Dungeons developers needed something that would encourage combat. "They do pursue you with axes and hunt you down, and this was so loved by the Minecraft team that they implemented it in that game before we released Dungeons."
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Dungeons was actually an internal idea of the Nintendo 3DS.



"You can't fit Minecraft an extremely complex game, onto that," Nisshagen said. This is why the developers chose a top-down perspective, instead of the original game's first-person viewpoint, and they focused on creating a world filled with opportunities for surprise and exploration.



"You cannot take the entire Minecraft game," he said. You need to simplify it but keep it to its core. We increased exploration and the feeling of adventure. Players should feel like they are in the middle of an adventure. And then we take the creativity that Minecraft players employ when they create the amazing things in the game. We try to let them use it in our progression system, I guess.



Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional progression system based on RPGs, and it doesn't force players to play in specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes such as "healer" or "tank" in the game, players are able to swap out their gear at any time and combine items to equip their weapons with whatever capabilities the situation requires.



Nisshagen stated, "You can think about changing that progression system thought into a Sandbox." There are no limits. You are free to do whatever you would like. There's the most awful choices you can make, but there are excellent choices or overpowered choices you can make."



There's no wrong method to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is crucial for developers, particularly when considering the intended players 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, featuring extensive progression trees and inventories, and tough combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of these markets.



"We think that we'll see parents playing with their children, or older and younger siblings playing together," Nisshagen said. "There's plenty of depth in the game. Anyone with a little amount of gaming experience is likely to find cool combinations of things to investigate, from a game mechanics point of view. Then, for the rest of us are able to just play and have a great time too."



Drop-in multiplayer is available both locally and online. Each stage adjusts to the amount of players. TNT boxes are the sole exception to friendly fire and could cause harm to friends and family members.



Cross-platform play will not be available at launch but it's "absolutely" likely to be available in the future, Nisshagen said.



"We're not a huge dev team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being capable of shipping the same game on PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Windows is quite an accomplishment actually. And then having cross-play, we'd like it to get it as soon as we can, but we want to make sure that we provide a great multiplayer experience on your own platform first."



In many ways, Minecraft Dungeons is the natural evolution of the Minecraft franchise. For a lot of kids in the 2000s, Minecraft was the first game they played due to its being accessible, creative and social. Ten years later the gamers are looking for something more complicated and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious answer. It's a common one.


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