David Nisshagen squeals in delight as he guides his blocky character down a narrow, raised platform, surrounded by violet flames. He's just discovered a secret room in Minecraft Dungeons, and even being the title's executive producer He's not sure what's going to happen. Through our Discord chat, you can hear his smile.
He said, "This is very rare." "This is extremely rare. OK?" I laugh and inform him that he is excited.
"Yes," he replies, "I haven't seen it in this level. This is incredible. Ok, so we actually have some very spooky and mysterious items in this game. I've just gathered something that could be extremely, very helpful to me later in the game, or should I ever play the game again."
Minecraft Dungeons is an adventure game that is influenced 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 and randomly generated levels and a myriad of brand new and familiar enemies, such as skeletons, creepers and spiders. The entire game is similar to Minecraft, but it represents an entirely fresh method of game development for Mojang.
Microsoft bought Mojang, the Swedish studio behind Minecraft, for $2.5 billion in 2014. Currently, it is under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella. This doesn't mean that 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 worldwide phenomenon that has introduced generations of youngsters and adults to sandbox style video games. Minecraft Dungeons is the studio's first attempt at a brand new category, and has been in production for at minimum four years.
The game's plot is straightforward and appropriately epic: An outcast villager -- known in the game as an illagerfound an orb with power and is using it to invade the world with armies of villagers under his command. The players travel across different regions to take on the Arch-Illager's gang until they encounter the orb-holder.
Mojang introduced illagers to its base Minecraft game in the year 2016, however Nisshagen stated that the creatures actually started out in the Dungeons development room.
He explained that we needed an enemy that was humanoid, with an attack that could be ranged and a speed-following hunting mechanism. After all, he said it was possible to run away from 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 that was so well-liked by the Minecraft team that they decided to incorporate it into the game before we had launched Dungeons."
In fact, Dungeons began as an internal idea for the Nintendo 3DS.
"You cannot fit Minecraft, such a complex game, onto this," Nisshagen said. The developers decided to look at the world from a top-down perspective rather than the first-person perspective. They wanted to create a world that is full of new opportunities and surprises.
"You can't take the whole Minecraft game," he said. It's important to simplify it but keep it to its core. We have increased exploration and a feeling of adventure. The players must feel like they're in the middle of an adventure. And then we take the creativity that Minecraft players employ when they design the amazing stuff they can in the game. We try to let them use that in our sort-of progression system, which is the word."
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 can switch out their gear and combine items to create weapons that have any abilities they need.
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"You could imagine us transforming that sandbox thought into the progression system," Nisshagen said. "There's absolutely no limit to what you can do. You can do almost anything you would like. There are some extremely bad choices you can make. However there are plenty of 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 intended audience that Minecraft is aimed at: children and their parents. As the brand, Minecraft is geared toward younger players, while dungeon crawler games are typically designed for adults, featuring extensive inventories and progression trees and challenging combat arenas. Minecraft Dungeons is an attempt to appeal to both of these market segments.
Nisshagen said she believes parents will play with their children, or older siblings and younger ones. "There's plenty of depth in the system. Anyone with a bit of gaming experience will discover interesting combinations of things to explore from a mechanics standpoint. Then there are the people who just want to go in and click-mash and have a great time.
Drop-in multiplayer is available both locally and online. Each stage adjusts to the number of players. TNT boxes are the sole exception to friendly fire and can be harmful to familiars and allies.
Cross-platform play won't be available at launch however it's "absolutely" likely to happen down the line, Nisshagen said.
He stated that "we're not a large development team." (Mojang's About Page lists 71 employees). "Just being able to ship the same game on 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 possible, but we want to make sure we have a good experience with multiplayer 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 as it was accessible, creative social, and easy to learn. In the past decade, these gamers are looking for something more challenging and Minecraft Dungeons is an obvious, familiar answer.
