Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen grins with joy as he guides his character's blocky form down the 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 happen. Through our Discord chat, you can hear his smile.



He said, "This is very rare." "This is extremely rare. Okay?" I laugh and inform my friend that he is happy.



He replies, "Yes," but the guy doesn't know what the reason. This is incredible. Okay, so, as you see, we do have a couple of quite spooky and mysterious things to look at. I've just discovered something that will prove useful to me 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 trademark kid-friendly flair. It has online and local multiplayer with randomly generated levels and hordes of new and familiar enemies, including skeletons spiders, and creepers. The entire game appears very similar to Minecraft but it's a new method of developing games for Mojang.



Microsoft purchased Mojang the Swedish studio that developed Minecraft for $2.5 billion in 2014, and today it operates under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella. This doesn't mean that 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 of kids and adults to sandbox-style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first attempt at an entirely new genre, and it's been in development for at minimum four years.



The game's plot is straightforward and appropriately 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 world of the dead with a army of villagers at his command. The players travel across different regions to fight the Arch-Illager's minions until they meet the orb-holder.



Mojang introduced illagers to its base Minecraft game in 2016, though Nisshagen said these creatures actually began in the Dungeons development room.



He said that we needed an enemy that was humanoid with the ability to attack from a distance and a speed-following hunting mechanism. After all, Nisshagen said it was possible to just escape the zombies in Minecraft, rather than fighting them, and Dungeons developers wanted something that encouraged combat. "They do chase you with axes and chase you down, and this was so well-liked by the Minecraft team that they decided to implement it into the game before we released Dungeons."



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



"You can't fit Minecraft, such a complex game, onto this," Nisshagen said. This is the reason why the developers decided to use a top-down perspective rather than the first-person perspective of the original game, and they focused on creating a world filled with possibilities for discovery and surprise.
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"You don't have the ability to play the entire Minecraft game," he said. You need to simplify it but keep it at the core. We have increased exploration and a feeling of adventure. The players must feel as if they're on an adventure. We then take the creativity that Minecraft players have when they create the amazing things in the game. We attempt to let them use it in our progression system, I think.



Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional, RPG-style progression system and it doesn't bind players to play in specific roles. Instead of being limited to a single class like "healer", "tank" or "tank" players can change their equipment and combine items to infuse weapons with any abilities they need.



Nisshagen said, "You can think about us transforming the thought process of progression into the Sandbox." There are no boundaries. You can do almost anything you would like. There are some the most awful choices you can make, but there's also extremely good choices or very overpowered choices that you can make."



There's no wrong way to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is crucial for developers, especially 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 challenging combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of these markets.



Nisshagen said that she believes that parents will play with their children or older siblings and younger ones together. "There's quite a bit of depth in the system. Anyone with a bit of gaming experience will find interesting combinations of things to investigate from a game mechanics point of view. Then there are those who just want to go in and click-mash and have a blast.



The game offers drop-in multiplayer that is both local and online and each stage adjusts according to the amount of players. TNT boxes are the only exception to friendly fire and can cause harm to both familiars and allies.



Cross-platform play won't be available at launch , but it is "absolutely" possible down the road, Nisshagen stated.



He said that "we're not a huge development team." (Mojang's About Page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to launch the same game on the PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows that's an amazing thing in and of itself. Then, having cross-play, we'd like it to get it as soon as we can, but we want to ensure that you have a great game experience for you on your own platform 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 simple, engaging, social and intuitive. Ten years later the gamers are looking for something more challenging, and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious, familiar answer.


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