Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen is squealing with delight as he directs his character's blocky form down a narrow, raised platform surrounded by violet flames. He's just discovered a hidden room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even though he's the executive producer of the game, he doesn't know 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 happy.



"Yes," he replies, "I haven't seen it in this level. This is just amazing. Actually you can see that we do have several very scary and mysterious things here. I've discovered something that will prove useful later in the game or should 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 style. It supports online and local multiplayer as well as randomly generated levels as well as a host of familiar enemies such creepers or skeletons and spiders. The entire game appears a lot like Minecraft, but it represents a new method of developing games for Mojang.



Microsoft purchased Mojang the Swedish studio that developed 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 10 years, Mojang has been 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 an entirely new genre, and it's been in production for at least four years.



The storyline of the game is simple and fittingly epic: An villager who is outcast -- referred to in-game as an illager -- found an orb of power and is using it to infiltrate the overworld with armies of villagers at his command. Players traverse different areas, fighting the arch-illager's minions and finally battling with the orb-holder.



Mojang introduced illagers into the base Minecraft game in 2016, although Nisshagen claimed that these creatures actually started out in the Dungeons development room.



"We needed an enemy that was humanoid and that had a ranged attack and an ability to hunt quickly," he explained. After all, Nisshagen said it was possible to just escape the zombies in Minecraft instead of fighting them, and Dungeons developers wanted something that would encourage combat. "They do chase you with axes and chase you down, and that was so appreciated by the Minecraft team that they decided to implement it into the game before we had launched Dungeons."



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



"You can't fit Minecraft, such a complex game, on this," Nisshagen said. This is why the developers chose the top-down view instead of the original game's first-person viewpoint and they focused on creating an environment that is full of opportunities for surprise and exploration.



"You can't take the whole Minecraft game," he said. It's best to simplify it but keep it at the core. ...We focused on exploration and the feeling of adventure. The players must feel as if they're on an adventure. pessoa.info And then we take the imagination and creativity Minecraft players have when they design all the amazing stuff they can in the game. We try to let them use this in our kind of progression system, which I think is the word."



Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional progression system based on RPGs and doesn't force players to take on specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes like "healer" or "tank" in the game, players are able to switch their equipment on the fly and combine items to equip 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 can do almost anything you would like. There are some extremely unwise choices you can make. However there are plenty of excellent choices and powerful choices that you can make.



There isn't a wrong method to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is crucial for developers, particularly considering the target audience that Minecraft is aimed at: children and their parents. As a brand, Minecraft is geared toward younger players, whereas dungeon-crawler games are typically designed for adults, and feature extensive inventories and progression trees, and challenging 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. The system has a lot of depth. Anyone with a bit of gaming experience will be able to find interesting combinations of things to explore from a game mechanics point of view. Then, for the rest of us are able to just enter and click-mash and have a good time as well."



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



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



"We're not a huge development team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to ship the same game on the PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows, that is very impressive in itself. We would like cross-play to be made available in the earliest time possible. However, we would like to ensure that we get an excellent experience with multiplayer on our own platforms first.



In many ways, Minecraft Dungeons is the natural evolution of the Minecraft franchise. For many 2000s-era kids, Minecraft was the first game they played because it was easy to play, fun social, and easy to learn. Ten years later the gamers are looking for something more challenging, and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious, familiar answer.


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