Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen laughs as he directs his blocky character down a narrow, elevated platform surrounded by flames of violet. He's just discovered a secret room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even though he's the title's executive producer the player isn't sure what's going to take place. Through our Discord chat you can hear his smile.



He said, "This is very rare." "This is super rare. Okay?" I laugh and I tell him that he sounds excited.



He responds, "Yes," but He doesn't understand why. It's amazing. Actually you can see that there are a couple of quite spooky and mysterious things to look at. I just collected something that could be extremely useful to me later in the game, or if 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 allows local and online multiplayer as well as randomly generated levels as well as a variety of familiar enemies, including creepers or skeletons and spiders. The whole thing appears a lot like Minecraft, but it represents an entirely fresh method of developing games for Mojang.



Microsoft purchased Mojang the Swedish studio behind Minecraft for $2.5 billion in 2014, and today 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 scheduled to hit PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One and Windows on May 26th.



For more than 10 years, Mojang has focused on Minecraft, the world-wide phenomenon that has introduced generations children and adults to sandbox-style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first real attempt at a new genre, and has been in production for at least four years.



The story is simple yet appropriately epic. A villager from the outcast community called an illager, stumbles upon an orb of power which he uses to invade the world. He has a force of villagers under his control. The players travel across different regions to fight the Arch-Illager's gang until they meet the orb-holder.



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



He explained that we needed an opponent that was humanoid with an attack that could be ranged and a fast-following hunting mechanism. After all, Nisshagen said it was possible to just run from the zombies in Minecraft, rather than fighting them, and Dungeons developers needed something that would encourage combat. "They do run after you with axes, and then hunt you down, and this was so appreciated by the Minecraft team that they implemented it into the game before we released Dungeons."



Dungeons was actually an internal concept of the Nintendo 3DS.



"You can't put Minecraft, such a complex game, onto this," Nisshagen said. The developers decided to look at the world from a top-down perspective rather than the original game's first-person view. They wanted to create a world full of possibilities for discovery and surprises.



"You cannot take the entire Minecraft game," he said. It's important to simplify it but keep it simple. We have increased exploration and a sense of adventure. Players should feel like they are in the middle of an adventure. Then we consider the imagination that Minecraft players have when they design all the awesome stuff in the game. We try to let them utilize 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 to play in specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes, such as "healer" or "tank" in the game, players are able to switch their gear at any time and mix items to enhance their weapons with whatever capabilities the situation requires.



"You could imagine us transforming that sandbox thought into the progression system," Nisshagen said. There are no boundaries. You are free to do whatever you want. There are some extremely bad choices you could make. However, there are also many excellent choices and powerful decisions you can make.



There's no wrong way to play Minecraft Dungeons. MINECRAFT This is crucial for developers, particularly when considering the target gamers that Minecraft is aimed at: children and their parents. As the brand, Minecraft is geared toward younger players, whereas dungeon crawler games are generally built for adults, with dense inventories and progression trees, and a challenging combat arena. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both these market segments.



Nisshagen said that she believes that parents will play with their children or older siblings and younger ones. "There's plenty of depth in the system. Anyone with some gaming experience will be able to find interesting combinations of things to investigate from a mechanics standpoint. Then, for the rest of us can simply go in and button-mash and have a good time too."



Drop-in multiplayer is available both locally and online. Each stage adjusts to the amount of players. There's no friendly fire, except for TNT boxes which can harm friends and family members alike when they explode.



Cross-platform play won't be offered at launch however it's "absolutely" likely to happen in the future, Nisshagen said.



"We're not a very big dev team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to launch the same game on the PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows, that is very impressive in itself. We want cross-play to be released as soon as we can. However, we would like to ensure that we have the best gaming experience on our own platforms 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 because it was simple, engaging social, and easy to learn. A decade on the same players are craving something more challenging and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious answer. It's a common one.


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