Minecraft Dungeons Preview
David Nisshagen squeals in delight as he leads his character's blocky form down a narrow, elevated platform that is surrounded by flames of violet. He's just discovered an undiscovered room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even though he's the title's executive producer he's not sure what's about to occur. The smile on his face can be visible on our Discord call.
"This is extremely rare," he says. "This is very rare. Okay?" I laugh and inform him that he is exuberant.
"Yes," he replies, "I haven't seen it in this level. This is amazing. Ok, so we actually have a few spooky and mysterious items in this game. I've found something that will be extremely useful to me later in the game, or should I ever play the game again."
Minecraft Dungeons is an adventure title inspired by classic dungeon crawlers like Diablo or The Binding of Isaac, but with the franchise's distinctive kid-friendly style. It features local and online multiplayer and randomly generated levels and a myriad of brand familiar and new enemies, including skeletons spiders and creepers. The entire game looks similar to Minecraft, but it represents an entirely fresh method of game development for Mojang.
Microsoft bought 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 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 been focusing on Minecraft, the world-wide phenomenon that's introduced generations of youngsters and adults to sandbox style video games. Live Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first real attempt at a new genre, and has been in development for at minimum four years.
The story is short but appropriately epic. A villager from the outcast community who is referred to as an illager, stumbles upon an orb of power, which he uses to invade the overworld. He has a force of illagers under his command. Players travel through distinct regions battling the Arch-Illager's minions and finally battling with the orb-holder himself.
Mojang introduced illagers to its base Minecraft game in 2016 though Nisshagen said these creatures actually started out in the Dungeons development room.
He said that we needed an opponent that was humanoid and had an attack that could be ranged and a fast-following hunter mechanism. In the end, Nisshagen explained that it was possible to just run from the zombies in Minecraft instead of fighting them or fighting them, and Dungeons developers wanted something that encouraged combat. "They do pursue you with axes and chase you down, and that was so loved by the Minecraft team that they decided to implement it into the game before we launched Dungeons."
Dungeons was actually an internal idea of the Nintendo 3DS.
"You can't put Minecraft as a complex game, on that," Nisshagen said. That's why developers went with a top-down perspective rather than the original game's first-person viewpoint and they concentrated on creating an environment that is full of opportunities for surprise and exploration.
"You cannot take the entire Minecraft game," he said. It's best to simplify it but keep it at the core. We have increased exploration and a feeling of adventure. Players should feel like they are on an adventure. Then we consider the imagination that Minecraft players employ to create all the amazing stuff they can in the game. We try to let them utilize that in our sort-of progression system, I guess is the word."
Minecraft Dungeons doesn't use a traditional progression system based on RPGs, and it doesn't force players into specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes like "healer" or "tank" in the game, players are able to change their gear on the fly and combine items to infuse their weapons with any abilities the situation calls for.
"You could imagine us transforming that sandbox thought into the progression system," Nisshagen said. There are no limitations. You are free to do whatever you would like. There's very bad choices you could make, but there's also excellent choices or powerful choices you can make."
There isn't a wrong method to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is essential for developers, particularly considering the target 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, and feature extensive progression trees and inventories, and challenging combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both these markets.
Nisshagen stated that she believes that parents will play with their children, or older siblings and younger ones. The system has a lot of depth. Anyone who has played before will discover intriguing combinations of things to look at from a game mechanics point of view. Then there are the people who just want to play and click and have a blast. Live
Drop-in multiplayer is available both online and locally. Each stage adjusts to the number of players. There is no friendly fire, except for TNT boxes, which can hurt allies and familiars alike as they explode.
Cross-platform play will not be available at launch, but it's "absolutely" going 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 able to launch the same game to the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows is quite an accomplishment actually. And then having cross-play, we'd like to get it as soon as we can, but we want to make sure that you have a great multiplayer experience on your personal 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 because it was accessible, creative social, and easy to learn. In the past decade the same players are hungry for something more complex, and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious answer. It's a common one.
