Minecraft Dungeons is an interesting project. Taking the established lore and universe of Minecraft and transplanting it into an action-RPG is a great idea. I mean, if Telltale could create an entire series of adventure games based on Minecraft, a dungeon crawler should be cake right? According to Nathan Rose, Snr. Project Manager, it was an idea that just made sense.
Speaking to Rose at PAX Aus, he told me that in the early stages Minecraft Dungeons was a hackathon project that “blossomed into one with 10 people for a while” before becoming what it is today; a fully-fledged project.
“It was the brainchild of somebody with a passion to add a different variety of gameplay to Minecraft,” Rose added. In Minecraft Dungeons, it’s all about bringing players of different skills, different levels and different levels together.
Minecraft Dungeons
I asked Rose if he considered Minecraft Dungeons to be Minecraft/Diablo and he said: “It’s Minecraft with a Diablo-style loot table and Gauntlet mechanics.” Diablo is a more mature, violent game too, he told me, and as Minecraft skews younger, Minecraft Dungeons needs to reflect that same age appropriateness.
Like Diablo, Rose explained “You’re always getting new and better loot. You can pick up our equivalent of a legendary item at level eight, but you may get a common item two levels later that is better than that. So you will always be picking up loot based on your level.”
A common theme in these loot heavy type of games is the notion that loot is discarded as you level up and you never really grow attached to your loadout until the end game. In Minecraft Dungeons, when you’re finished with an item, you’re able to destroy/salvage it which will return all of your spent stat points as well as granting you some Emeralds; the in-game currency.
Unlike Diablo though, in the endgame, you won’t need to use a particular build or archetype to get through the mobs. Rose explained that instead, the team is working hard to make Minecraft Dungeons work no matter what players choose to do.
The endgame will include level modifiers that will have a drastic effect on the gameplay and could include things like only one life, additional summons, better criticals and the like.
Minecraft Dungeons will be available on PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One in 2020.
