Notes

Minecraft: Dungeons Preview

David Nisshagen smiles in delight as he leads his character's blocky body down the narrow, elevated platform that is covered in violet flames. He's just discovered a hidden room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even being the executive producer of the title He's not sure what's going to happen. Through our Discord chat you can see his smile.



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



He replies, "Yes," but the guy doesn't know the reason. This is amazing. Okay, so we have a few very spooky and mysterious items in this game. I just collected something that could be very, very useful for me later in the game, or if I ever play the game again."



Minecraft Dungeons is an adventure game inspired by classic dungeon crawlers such as Diablo or The Binding of Isaac, but with the franchise's trademark kid-friendly flair. It supports online and local multiplayer and randomly generated levels as well as a plethora of familiar enemies, such as creepers spiders, and skeletons. The entire game is similar to Minecraft however, it is a innovative approach to game development for Mojang.



Microsoft purchased 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 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 a decade, the company has focused on Minecraft, the global phenomenon that has introduced generations of children and adults to sandbox-style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first attempt at a brand new genre, and it's been in development for at minimum four years.



The storyline of the game is simple but fittingly epic. An outcast villager, known as an illager, stumbles upon an orb of power, which he uses to invade the overworld. He has a group of villagers under his command. The players travel through various areas to battle the Arch-Illager's gang until they meet the orb-holder.



Mojang introduced illagers into the base Minecraft game in 2016, though Nisshagen said these creatures were actually created in the Dungeons development room.



"We needed an enemy that was humanoid, and that could be attacked from a distance, and that had an easy-follow hunting system," he explained. After all, he said that it was possible to escape from zombies in Minecraft rather than fight them in combat, and Dungeons developers needed something that would encourage combat. "They do run after you with axes and hunt you down, and that was so appreciated by the Minecraft team that they decided to incorporate it in the game prior to when we had released Dungeons."



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



"You cannot fit Minecraft an extremely complex game, on this," Nisshagen said. Developers chose to look at the world from a top-down viewpoint rather than the original game's first person perspective. They wanted to create a world full of possibilities for discovery and surprises.



"You don't have the ability to play the entire Minecraft game," he said. "You should not simplify it and narrow on its primary elements. ...We doubled down on exploration and also the feeling of adventure. The players need to feel like they're on an adventure. We then take the imagination that Minecraft players employ when they design all the amazing things in the game. We try to let them use it in our progression system, I suppose.



Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional, RPG-style progression system and doesn't force players to play in specific roles. Instead of being limited to a single type of character like "healer", "tank" or "tank" players are able to switch out their equipment and combine items to create weapons that have any abilities they need.



"You could imagine our transforming that sandbox concept into the progression system," Nisshagen said. There are no limits. You can do pretty much whatever you want. There are some very bad choices you can make, but there's also excellent choices or powerful choices you can make."



There's no wrong way to play Minecraft Dungeons. FUN GALLERY 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, while dungeon crawler games are usually designed for adults, featuring extensive inventories and progression trees and a challenging combat arena. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of these market segments.



"We think we'll see parents playing with children or older and younger siblings playing together," Nisshagen said. "There's quite a bit of depth in the game. Anyone that has a bit of gaming experience will probably find cool combinations of things to look into from a mechanics point of view. There are those who just want to go in and click-mash and have a great time.



Drop-in multiplayer is available both online and locally. Each stage adapts to the number of players. There's 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 until the launch, but it is "absolutely" possible down the road, Nisshagen stated.



"We're not a huge dev team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to launch the same game on the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Windows is quite an accomplishment actually. In addition, if we can offer cross-play, we'd like it to have it as quickly as possible, but we want to ensure that we provide a great game experience for you on your platform 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 as it was easy to play, fun and social. Ten years later these gamers are looking for something more complex, and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious, well-known answer.


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