Long before Minecraft Dungeons was revealed, Mojang was content to rest on its humble laurels as the developer of a pop culture phenomenon. To date, Minecraft has sold over 175 million copies, is available on every platform imaginable, and has quite the merchandise empire. Not since Pokemon has video game intellectual property so deeply ingrained in the mainstream consciousness. It wouldn’t be until 2017 and the soaring Fortnite player expects that feat to be matched.
What’s more remarkable is that, over the past decade, Mojang has risen to the heights of video game fame with just one title. Minecraft has been more than enough to maintain a staggering success even without the help of sequels or spinoffs. Sure, there was the adventure game Minecraft: Story Mode, but that wasn’t developed by Mojang, and we all know the dark fate of Telltale Games.
All that to say, given Mojang’s penchant for the status quo, the Minecraft Dungeons announcement came as a surprise. At Minecon 2018, Mojang teased a new dungeon-crawling action-RPG set in their recognizable universe with a Minecraft Dungeons trailer. Recently, Mojang Executive Producer David Nisshagen and Game Director Måns Olson sat down with us at X019 to talk about the new blocky dungeon crawler and we got a chance to play the closed beta ahead of release. This year.
Minecraft Dungeons release date
After a long wait, the release date has finally been revealed for this year. The Minecraft Dungeons release date is May 26, 2020.
Minecraft Dungeons Cooperation
Minecraft Dungeons features drop-in/drop-out four-player co-op play. According to Minecraft Dungeons executive producer David Nisshagen, the difficulty will change on the fly to match the number of players. The game is still playable solo, so you don’t necessarily need to party to progress.
That said, Mojang’s cooperative gaming inspirations are obvious. The team made their admiration for some of the genre’s best-known titles clear in an interview we had with the company at E3 2019. Minecraft Dungeons owes a lot to Diablo and Left 4 Dead to name a couple who, when combined with Mojang’s already masterful formula, is quite the heady concoction.
At Minecon 2019 we got a new look at Minecraft Dungeons and more details on co-op play, with new spell effects and artifacts in Minecraft Dungeons.
History of Minecraft Dungeons
In the Minecraft Dungeons cinematic trailer revealed at Minecon 2019 and pictured above, we see a lost, outcast villager take control of a special power and become the Arch-Illager Supreme. Driven by vengeance, the Arch-Illager launches an evil tirade across the land and it’s up to you to defeat him.
David Nisshagen says of the story: “We provide a few things from Minecraft that we think are useful. Like, we have – it’s not a deep, complex narrative but we have a narrative. We have an antagonist. You are a hero and you are supposed to defeat a big and bad enemy. To do this, we give you a direction.
Minecraft Dungeons Abilities and Gameplay
In Minecraft Dungeons, you are not tied to a specific class for the entire game. Instead, your powers and abilities are tied to the gear you wear. Equipping a bow turns you into an archer, for example, and grabbing heavy armor turns you more into a tank.
David Nisshagen, he’s referring to enchantments in Minecraft Dungeons, specifically balancing items and allowing supercharged items to stay exactly that, he says “most of the design decisions we tend to like – well, that’s incredibly overpowered. Let’s keep it because it’s fun, rather than trying to contain and love, balance it out.” It’s because of Dungeon’s system for item combinations, “the kind of combination of artifacts and enchantments and that you can adapt us to a new situation,” Nisshagen explains, “that tends to lead to these overpowered bursts where you feel so powerful you feel like you’ve broken the game .
Nisshagen also talks about the accessibility of Minecraft dungeons compared to other dungeon crawlers, says Nisshagen: “Getting into them can be quite tricky, so we’ve done everything we can to make sure we’re in the same space, but getting it is super easy. he goes on to say that this approach doesn’t deter gameplay depth, “We also try a lot to balance that without losing depth,” he says, adding, “I think there’s a lot of depth in the game , in how you combine your gear, how you enchant your gear, [and] find secrets.
Minecraft Dungeon Crafting
In an unexpected twist for a game set in the Minecraft universe, Dungeons doesn’t feature mining or crafting. According to Nisshagen, it was decided that traditional Minecraft gameplay was too slow for the faster action that Mojang was aiming for with Dungeons. Instead, the team implemented a new enchantment system – similar to the base game – that can augment gear in a fun way. The hope is to provide players with some flexibility in loading their gear beyond random loot drops.
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This type of randomization will improve the replayability of Minecraft Dungeon and bring to mind other loot-focused games like Fallout or Diablo.
Minecraft Dungeons tuning and procedural generation
Minecraft Dungeons won’t take you long to play, in fact it only has nine levels and has replayability in mind. These levels will be procedurally generated, with many universe biomes among the possible Minecraft seeds. Adventurers will also face traditional Minecraft mobs, such as spiders and skeletons.
Minecraft Dungeons difficulty settings will test players, with three different difficulty types and a threat slider that can be moved from one to six, recommending a setting based on your current level.
And there you have it, that’s all we know about Minecraft Dungeons so far. It’s exciting to see Mojang expand its seminal universe that’s defined by experimentation beyond the open-world formula we’re all familiar with, even though it’s taken a decade to get there. You can read our thoughts on the Minecraft Dungeons Closed Beta preview.