Minecraft Dungeons Preview
David Nisshagen laughs in joy as he guides his character's blocky body down the narrow, elevated platform that is flanked by violet flames. He's just discovered a hidden room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even being the title's executive producer He's not sure what's about to happen. Through our Discord chat you can see his smile.
"This is extremely rare," he says. "This is extremely rare. Okay?" I laugh and I tell him that he sounds excited.
He replies, "Yes," but he doesn't know the reason. This is amazing. Okay, so, as you see, there are a couple of quite spooky and mysterious things in this game. I just found something that will prove very useful later in the game or should I go back to the game.
Minecraft Dungeons is an adventure game inspired by classic dungeon crawlers like Diablo or The Binding of Isaac, but with the franchise's patented kid-friendly flair. It has online and local multiplayer, randomly generated levels, and hordes of familiar and new enemies, such as skeletons, spiders and creepers. The entire experience looks a lot like Minecraft however, it is a new approach to game development for Mojang.
Microsoft purchased Mojang the Swedish studio behind Minecraft for $2.5 billion in 2014. Today, it is 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 a decade, Mojang has focused on Minecraft, the global phenomenon that's introduced generations of children and adults to sandbox-style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first real attempt at a new genre, and it's been in development for at around four years.
The storyline of the game is simple yet appropriately epic. A villager who is outcast called an illager, finds an orb of power, which can be used to conquer the world of. He has a group of villagers under his command. The players travel across different regions to take on the Arch-Illager's minions until they encounter the orb-holder.
Mojang introduced illagers into the base Minecraft game in 2016 however Nisshagen stated that the creatures were actually created in the Dungeons development room.
"We needed an enemy that was humanoid, that had a ranged attack and the ability to hunt quickly," he explained. After all, he said, it was possible to just run from the zombies in Minecraft, rather than fighting them in combat, and Dungeons developers needed something that would encourage combat. "They do run after you with axes and chase you down, and that was so loved by the Minecraft team that they decided to implement it in that game before we had launched Dungeons."
In reality, Dungeons began as an internal concept for the Nintendo 3DS.
"You cannot fit Minecraft as a complex game, on this," Nisshagen said. The developers chose to view the world from a top-down view rather than the original game's first person perspective. They wanted to create a world full of new opportunities and surprises.
"You cannot take the entire Minecraft game," he said. "You should not make it easy and narrow it down to its core elements. We increased exploration and the sense of adventure. Players should feel as if they are on an adventure. Then we consider the creativity Minecraft players employ to create all the amazing things in the game. We try to let them use that in our sort-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 play in specific roles. Instead of having rigid classes, such as "healer" or "tank" in the game, players are able to swap out their equipment on the fly and mix items to enhance their weapons with the abilities are needed in the current situation.
Nisshagen stated, "You can think about the possibility of transforming the thought process of progression into a sandbox." There are no limitations. You are free to do whatever you want. There are some extremely bad choices you could make. However, there are also many great choices and powerful choices you can make.
There's no wrong method to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is crucial for developers, especially considering the target players that Minecraft is aimed at: children and their parents. As a brand, Minecraft is geared toward younger players, while dungeon-crawler games are usually designed for adults, with dense inventories and progression trees, and challenging combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of 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. https://1gameday.com/ Anyone with some gaming experience will be able to find intriguing combinations of things to explore from a game mechanics perspective. There are also those who can just play and click and have a great time.
The game offers drop-in multiplayer both local and online and each stage adjusts to the amount of players. TNT boxes are the one exception to friendly fire, and can cause harm to both allies and familiars.
Cross-platform play won't be available at launch , but it is "absolutely" possible down the road, Nisshagen stated.
"We're not a large development team," he said (Mojang's About page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to ship the same game on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Windows that's very impressive in itself. We want cross-play to be available as soon as possible. However, we want to ensure we have an excellent multiplayer experience 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 accessible, creative social, and easy to learn. In the past decade the gamers are looking for something more complex and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious answer. It's a common one.
