‘Minecraft Dungeons’ Release Date And 5 Things To Know Before You Play
by Dave Thier
It’s a little bit Diablo, it’s a little bit Minecraft. Microsoft is releasing a new game in the Minecraft series this week, but it’s not quite what you might expect if you’ve been whacking at blocks and erecting castles over the past decade or so. It’s in the same tradition as Minecraft: Story Mode, which took the familiar aesthetics and chucked them into an entirely new genre. The genre is different this time around—dungeon crawler rather than narrative game—but the basic concept is the same.
Minecraft Dungeons comes out on May 26, 2020. Here’s what you need to know:
It’s not very exclusive: Microsoft has been loosening—not eliminating, but loosening—the concept of exclusives for years now, and nowhere has that been more evident than with Minecraft, which is available on basically all platforms that could feasibly run it. Minecraft Dungeons follows in this tradition to some degree: it will be available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC, but it’s skipping mobile.
It’s not like regular Minecraft: This is Minecraft in that things are made out of charming voxels and that there are a bunch of the same models imported into the game. Everything else is totally different. There is no crafting, no resource collection, no building.
Instead, its a dungeon crawler. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, it’s a typically isometric game where you traipse through procedurally-generated levels and click on enemies to annihilate them with a range of weapons, abilities and spells. The enemies, in turn, spew out loot that you can use to improve and customize your character. The genre is typified by the Diablo series, but there are plenty others.
It’s on Game Pass: Like all of Microsoft’s first-party outings, Minecraft Dungeons will come to Game Pass on day one. That means if you’ve got a subscription, you can start playing for no extra money. If you don’t, there are usually some deals that you can take advantage of to play it for some comically low price.
If you want to buy it, it will cost $19.99. I’d recommend Game Pass.
It’s Easy to Jump Into: While this isn’t Minecraft in any formal way, it does retain its spirit: its not as complex as some of its darker competition, but it remains approachable, additive, and straightforward. It’s got a great little loop of clearing out levels, clicking o it’s got a great little loop of clearing out levels, clicking on baddies, get n baddies, getting better loot and running the whole cycle again. Cooldown-based abilities and copious pickup make it easier to grok than potion systems in other games, and it won’t take long before you’re figuring out some potent combinations to feel powerful.
It’s a Little Light: This is the other side of the approachability coin. While it’s super easy to get started with this, it’s also a little simplistic. Don’t come here looking for deep systems and elaborate story, come here for the ability to cruise through some levels, get some loot and burn off steam for a little while. Games like these are half-mindless, which is not a criticism. Minecraft Dungeons has a meditative quality to it, letting you fall into a simple rhythm and turn off part of your brain while keeping the rest just engaged enough to keep the other half from waking back up. It’s an important sort of game at anytime, but especially now.
Microsoft provided a retail code for the purposes of this preview