Minecraft Dungeons is a new action-adventure game set in the Minecraft Universe. To get fans excited, developer Mojang has released a series of videos highlighting the different aspects of Minecraft Dungeons. In the most recent episode, you can see different levels and discover how the plot affects the environment.
Minecraft Dungeons is a dungeon crawler, so you'll be roaming various areas from an isometric perspective, slaughtering various familiar foes like creepers, zombies, spiders, skeletons, and Wraiths, which set large areas of a level alight. You’ll also find ‘piggybank mobs’ that carry around lots of loot with melee and ranged attacks, in environments resembling biomes from the main game. The video shows how biomes look and how games play out.
"The levels in Minecraft Dungeons are to some extent procedurally generated," game designer Pontus Hammarberg said in the video. "The way that we've married procedural generation with rewarding gameplay is to design sort of like puzzle pieces that we can then tell the engine to arrange for us, either in a way that we specifically tell us to do or in a way that is more random."
Indeed, the randomness will probably feel far less random than in other games. "What procedural generation doesn't take into account is pacing, what kind of encounters you will have, how the level plays in general, so you have to strike a good mix between procedural generation and crafted content," level designer Christian Berg added.
The storyline for the game is pretty classic, the main villain in Minecraft Dungeons is the Arch-Illager, who, much like The Grinch who stole Christmas, was bullied and disliked by other villagers until he finds a powerful artifact that gives him unfathomable power. He forces all the villagers who shunned him to follow his commands and begins a campaign of terror ransacking other villages across the land. Naturally, you and your friends will set out to defeat him and his hordes of Illager minions.
So, what are your thoughts on the new story-based Minecraft series? Do you think they should have stuck with the base game and kept adding content instead of releasing more story-based games? Personally, I think it's an enjoyable experience and would love to try it out. Whatever your thoughts may be, let us know in the comments below.
