Minecraft Dungeons: Extended Gameplay Demo

Hello, everyone. We are back with a little bit more Minecraft Dungeons, and joined with me is Executive Producer David Nisshagen and Senior Producer Nathan Rose. Thanks so much for coming back, guys. Yeah. Thank you.

Love the round of applause there. Now we’re going to be playing some Minecraft throughout this, and there are some secrets so we might stop halfway through. But shall we dive straight into the gameplay and get some chat and go while we’re doing it? Why not? I mostly just want to play.

Because that’s what we’re all going to feel like. I think that’s the biggest thing. Let’s just hop in and play the game. Yeah. We’re just going to dive in and talk through everything that we’re seeing, see some gameplay. We’re going to play some enchantments, so the level and gameplay we’ve got here.

So what we’re starting with? So obviously, you’re now seeing two players, local co-op or couch co-op in couches. Yeah. It’s good literally, which is good. We’ve lined up. Yeah. So you have Nathan here playing, you see his hot bar to the lower left. Okay. Then you have to the lower right.

Then you also see some world interaction world that has earned some things. You can run around. It’s never-ending. Yeah. Even loot behind. Come on. Yeah. Sometimes they give you emeralds like here. That’s like a currency you can use in there’s like hub camp. Okay. Yeah.

As you progress in the game, you sort of unlock merchants there. So you can spend those emeralds there to get some really cool stuff. So it’s very good for players like me who want to explore every nook and cranny, get as much currency as possible, and then go. Yeah.

So I mean, Minecraft as a brand is about several different things, and a couple of the things that we want to double down with Dungeon specifically is then that you’re on an adventure and that you should be rewarded for exploration. Absolutely.

This is one of those things, where there’s a lot of things going on here as well. A lot of creepers. I can just mention as well. You see that bubble that you placed down? Yeah. Yeah. That is something we call an artifact. I can’t remember this. That’s a totem of shielding, I believe.

Oh, it’s a totem of shielding. You’re right. So it’s a second on the fast further. Yeah. So that sort of protects you from incoming ranged damage. Pick up that strength portion, too. I believe when we and Betty were playing this yesterday as well, you can’t fire arrows

Out of that as well, can you? No. Right. You so are completely protected in there. Speaking of arrows, so I’m going to load my fireworks arrow. So that’s my next item in my quiver. If I shoot at these guys up here, it’ll do a big area of explosion. Oh, like that. Sweet.

I caused his guard to drop with that, which is fine. We got a Reserved Drop. As you see, you get some loot as you play. Everything you see there is color-coded to you and it says “Reserved Drop”. So everyone gets something. There’s no rolling for need or greed in this. No.

Just go then you can have it? You’re not the first guy that runs then picks it up, gets it. Exactly. Damn it. I didn’t know that finds have higher philosophies. It’s just like run it, get all the loot before anyone else. It’ll works out. I can’t pick up your loot and vice versa.

So this is a brand new level. This is the first time we showed it. Well, we had to look there on Into Xbox Program a little bit further with it today, aren’t we? We can kill the sheep? If you kill the sheep. You can. You can. What do we get from him?

Can we get wool from it or mutton? Stop running away. Stop running away. Sometimes you get food from them, and that’s like same as in ordinary Minecraft. Yeah. We tried to use as many. You can actually go up there and explore it, if you want to. You want to go up here? Yeah.

Check it out. If you want to, you can also bring up the map. Yes. So you can see a bit how it is. Just the over? Yeah. Just the overlay. We get support by that. So there you see the map and how that looks.

So you can see that it’s a bit of a maze. This is procedurally generated to some extent, not everything. So there’s like a key starts and a key ends and a couple of gates that you need to go through or key objective.

But the rest of it is just generated as you load in so it’ll be a little bit different every time. Quite a bit different. Definitely, all the areas that have little secrets and little things to discover, those will sometimes be there, sometimes not.

So you need to run around and explore a bit and find them. How much work goes in the game behind the scenes to make a procedurally generated game like that? There’s a lot because it needs to or it’s easy to make everything procedural. That’s fairly easy, but it becomes really boring.

Speak for yourself. This looks great. So we’ve done sort of a middle way here where we have it setup as we call them tiles. Like the rooms that are handcrafted to be a bit beautiful and also have interesting gameplay.

Then we put these rooms or tiles together in a random order, and then we sort of filled them with a bit random things. Okay. It’s a good middle ground. It sounds very familiar. If I may mention the game, it sounds very familiar to Binding Of Isaac and that they

Get specific rooms, and when you load in, we randomize which ones connect together. Yeah. I know. I know and die. No, no, no. Why you have to take me out for? He’s just hanging out. Let me revive him, though. All right. You’re just showing off gameplays each. Exactly.

This is how you revive, if you somehow get taken down. So some of you may have seen that totem that I placed down, which was a healing totem, which evidently didn’t work that well for Benny. But he does have a backup health potion if he wants to use that. There we go.

There we go. Yeah. While we have a free space right here, should we look at some of the enchantments really quick? Yeah. Let’s do. Let me get around the tree first. All right. So let’s come back over here so that nobody gets in our way.

Check out the inventory really quick, and I happen to have one of our unique drops, Nightmares Bite. When we equip that, and then look at the enchantments really quickly. Okay. All right. So I can mention this as well then. So all the items you find in the game, everybody can equip everything. Yeah.

We don’t have any classes or anything like that because you don’t have that in Minecraft. No classes, no abilities. If you can find diamonds, you can put them on? If you find gold, you can put them on? Wearing gold would be slight beautiful. Yeah. Exactly.

It depends if you have a bit for fashion, so you put the gold on. Then if you’re going out raiding, you want to put the diamonds on. If you’re very lucky, you might find like diamond swords or diamond pickaxe maybe and everybody can equip that. Yes.

To make sure we have a lot of depth in the system here. I mean, it’s supposed to be very accessible and approachable, just easy to pick up and go. Yeah. But there’s a lot of depth under the hood here, right? So every of these items that you have have randomized sets of enchantments.

I really like the Fire Aspect and then we’re mixing that with poison on this particular weapon. Then I can choose between Echo, which does an additional hit or has a percentage to do an additional hit. Sharpness sharpens your weapon up a little bit, does some more damage.

Smiting, it does feel like we’re getting attacked because my controller is vibrating. So let me do that, and we’ll get back into the action. Yeah. You’re already in the attic. I’m dead again. You know what? Night’s falling. Let’s kind of let that fall for a little bit.

Are you sure you want to do this? Okay. Well, I do have a health potion. I’m pretty strong. I can’t believe this. So anyway, you’ve seen that it’s gotten a little bit darker in the level. We have creepers coming out, baby zombies. It only happens at night in Minecraft? Yes.

That continues to fall until you revive everyone in your party. Yeah. Exactly. Monsters spawn in the dark. Sunlight comes back up, let me draw my healing totem. We can give you a little bit of health. You did use your potion. Great. There we go. There you saw it.

Then we’ll go in the dungeon. Cool. I think what’s really exciting, so even with your exclusive items, you’ve got the ability to adjust them and changes them throughout the game. Yes. Are those going to have random enchantments as well if you get some unique items? Yeah.

So the unique items, they literally have one very strong innate property to them. So the Nightmare’s Bites that you had with now, that has poison Cloud effects. So sometimes when you hit mobs, it does a poison Cloud that poisons them over time. Great. We’ve got some TNT. We’ve got some TNT in there.

Go ahead and throw that. I’ll get out of the way. Okay. Get out out of the way. Did you throw dynamite at one spider so you could melee the chicken? No, I threw it at the chicken. The chicken that approached me. He is kind of squishy. Yeah.

You see why I love that weapon, it’s so good. Really fast and has poke based damage. It pokes the poison as well. Benny, you need to heal. All right. There we go. That’s okay, I got him. He’s good. The healing starts from there again. You see these enchanted spiders, they’re big and purple.

Those are actually enchanted by a mob. It’s the guy with the book, right? Yeah. Yeah. Book dude, I think you called him. Enchanters. We’re very clever. God, you’re clever. That’s why we want to kill them first if we see them. Absolutely. They do pretty much, they give some randomized properties.

Same enchantments that you as a player can have. Sometimes you see the mobs then with double damage or fast attack or spiders with a multi-shot that shoot several webs at you instead of one. It’s funny. But they also give them a bit more health and general damage. So it’s like a mini boss.

They are a bit tougher then everything else on the floor. Yes. Some of the things are horribly annoying. If you have an enchanted Creeper as an example, you need to kill them before they blow up. They can enhance each other too. Enchanted enchanters? Yes. Obviously. Goodness.

It’s not like the witches in actual Minecraft. Those will always be the ones. If I see a witch, they need to go first. Oh, yes. One thing I was wondering is, what makes Minecraft dungeons different to other dungeon crawlers that other players may have experienced?

Yeah, so I mean dungeon crawlers are certainly, it’s one of the key inspirations but we also take a lot of inspirations from other games and other genres. I mean you mentioned great inspiration, we loved that one. But also we want this game to be fun to play with your friends.

So we’ve taken a lot of inspiration from like modern co-op games and try to use a couple of mechanics and things from them to inspire us to do this a bit differently, not like this. But I mean if you compare it to more traditional dungeon crawlers, we don’t have any classes.

We don’t have any abilities. When you level up your character doesn’t get better in anyway, the only thing you get is an enchantment point and You know when you level up, you don’t get powerful, you get something. No, maybe we can time that just right. No, that was pure coincidence.

But that’s the only thing you get. With these enchantment points, you can enchant your gear to make it better. So it’s like reinspecting in melee or health or stuff like that. It all goes onto what you’re wearing and how you fight. Exactly, right. So nobody has more health, or gain new abilities.

Everything you find what we call the artifacts in the hot fire there, you can change them and re-equipped them on the fly. Everybody can equip everything, you can equip multiple of the same thing if you want to. That’s quite different to other games in the genre.

They tend to have a very well controlled but it’s actually quite controlled progression. What you’re supposed to do when it’s a lot of thought that goes into balancing that. Sure, absolutely. Go ahead and open that. I will let you do that one on. It looks nice and shiny, that’s the thing. It is.

Oh, okay. What you get, long bows? Yeah. Oh, Benny look, you’ve gathered loads of lovely things and now I’m going to play it without having you pick up. No, I want this one. I just want you to stop. You can go ahead and join it. Join back in, Benny. No.

I want this character you’ve been working on. So should we just join in? Sure, just press eight, and again, and there you go. So tell us about what just happened, because Benny just pressed a couple buttons, and is now in the game. Yeah. That’s going to be not just built for today- No.

– that’s what co-op is going to be in the full game. That’s fun, right? Yeah. So is that. Four players. – whenever anyone hops in, you can just do that? You can pop in, pop out, just like that. Yeah. Now we have set up a character. Of course, right?

So you have some stuff on it. So if you just hop in, you’ll be like, you won’t have any stuff. Yeah. So you will be like- So you’ll just do nothing, you’ll just be sitting there and guys are going to be like, “Please help me and kill everything.” That’s actually a point, right?

So that’s one of the differences to say other games in the genre or other games that have a big focus on long-term progression. How do you make a level 20 play together with a level one. Someone brand new? Here, you can just pick up and equip everything you find.

So let the high level, or the well equipped player lead the way. Get some loot, pick it up and equip that, and suddenly you just on the same level. Do you want to talk really quickly about- so I’ve separated the characters intentionally. Do you want to talk about the grouping mechanics?

So see how I don’t have an aura underneath me, when we come together though- so if we can all come together. Oh, I never even noticed that. Is that a specific thing? Yeah, so the colors like symbolizes different buffs so to speak, which is bonuses.

That’s dependent on the type of armor you have equipped. So one of these armors have a bit of a damage boost, that’s the red one. I think the blue one is to speed boost. Yeah. Oh, you did a little puzzle. Yeah, so there’s puzzles. What was that, that just happened?

Is that a secret puzzle? It was a secret puzzle. So if you see these switches around the levels, it may open some doors. This one did, and as we go inside, we’ll see that there’s- aiming for that chest. I mean let’s call it an obsidian chest. I don’t know.

The deluxe chest I think is the internal name for it. Oh, someone got a name legendary. We got the archer’s armor. Okay. Oh, I did. You did? Nice. Begin. Sorry, Benny. Equip it. So it has a name. Oh, look at that.

I literally just did what I normally do when a big chest opens and I started spamming, and I was like, “Oh, my epic.” Also like everything you pick up is yours and it stays that way. Can you trade stuff at all or is it just your loot and then that’s what you have?

Your loot and it’s yours. As you pick up more and more stuff obviously, you’ll fill up your inventory with more and more things. So we have a bit of a salvage mechanic. You get better and better stuff, and the old stuff is not going to be useful anymore.

So you can salvage that and get some emeralds from it. If you had invested in the enchantment points into it, you’ll get those back as well. So you can reinvest them in something new and fun.

So I want to talk about the fact that we had a chat on Thursday on Inside Xbox, and we heard that the game is coming in April. How long has this actually been in development behind the scenes and specifically the one

Thing I want to know is, you’ve got Minecraft, what day did someone come in and just say the words, “Minecraft Dungeons” and you decided to go with it? Oh, it was a long process. It’s been in dev for about three years I’d say.

The funny thing is, it actually started as a 3DS game. Okay. All right, so we wanted to do something that you couldn’t do in Minecraft. That means you need to focus down on a couple of things, not do everything, obviously.

So the things that we wanted to focus on was adventure, exploration, and combat. Yeah, I bet you ticked all of those. Then if you think of that on the 3DS setting, I mean okay, top down, makes sense. Dungeon crawler style loot collection, makes sense. You are in an adventure.

You are exploring and there’s a lot of combat. Then we started building that and it quite quickly figured out that this is kind of fun, what if we put it on a PC? Then what have we put it on console, why don’t we add a multiplayer? So it gradually groomed.

Started adding elements, yeah. So there was never a specific plan on, “We’re going to do a dungeon crawler because there’s a gap in the market,” or anything like that. It’s based on the things that we wanted to accomplish. Adventure, exploration and combat, and a genuine passion from the dev team.

This is a genre or a lifestyle that we really love. The same goes for [inaudible] so Chief Creative Officer at Minecraft as well. He also really loves there. I’ve got you. It’s going to happen to anybody, Benny. I have died twice, which is pretty impressive so far.

Is that a Llama we have with us? Yeah, so Benny used his wonderful week, which is his Y button. He summoned this Llama which actually acts as an archer. Those ranged attacks on enemies, you’ll see it spitting at the enemies actually. Yeah.

I mean, that’s what they do whenever you go up to merchants and you do a bit of an attack, they get spitty don’t they? Well, if you walked up to a Llama in real life. You think so? Well, last time I went before a Llama, it spat on me. I know.

You reveal the most amazing things about your life whenever the camera is on, and I applaud you for it. Yes .We learned the other day that you had a seventh birthday party on a big old boat. Yeah. Honestly, it’s just your car. It’s more proving.

I’ve always asked, we’d like to prove out in line in a way that we can’t exactly get trauma points [inaudible] >> I’m dead now. No other ways that player is going to progress throughout Minecraft Dungeons. So how do you progress? Through them? Yeah.

So there is a high level story to all of this. We have an online craft.net, you can probably find a link to our intro cinematic that sets up the story. If I summarize it, there is a lone little illager that wanders the lands searching for a home.

It doesn’t find a home but he finds the orb of dominance. It’s a cube, obviously, but it’s a magical thing that corrupts him. Turns him evil and now, he wants revenge and wants to conquer the lands. You and your friends are heroes that are out to stop him. Oh, to stop him.

So it’s not a very deep and complicated story but there’s a very clear goal, you want to save the villagers and rescue the lands, and you have an antagonist that you need to defeat. Absolutely. From there, you progress throughout a range of the levels or missions like these on the

Way to defeat him. Okay. Also, I’ve got to ask Nathan. What is your personal favorite part about Minecraft Dungeons? Just how the game really comes together when you’re playing with friends, sitting on a couch, just four-player coop is so much fun. Even two-player.

But then, even by itself, just going through and exploring a lot of these Biomes and levels is just seeing a lot of the Minecraft characters coming in, creepers, and all that, it’s a lot of fun to play, you just get lost in it.

Well, the other thing I think I’ve enjoyed the most is spotting things I recognized from the game, I must admit, I play quit frequently. But then also, there’s new characters, you say the enchanters that are going around and

The fact that this looks similar to Biomes we know but there’s also a little [inaudible] new touch to it as well? So if we go into a little bit of how the sausage is made. It’s literally like, so what do we need when we do the stronger of the action, adventures,

Slash Dungeon crawler start the game play. Okay. So we need pets. So we need a mini pets. Okay, wolves. Wolves, they exist in Minecraft, people understand what they do, we don’t have to explain it because you just know it. We need a range attack pets into the lama.

So we take the key design elements that we need to make a good game, see if there’s things that are available in Minecraft that we can take, either as they are or do slight adaptations like the Enderman is a good example of an adaptation that’s kind of tricky Yes. Yeah.

Easy to play of it here and he pops up on the map and the screen, all changes. Yeah. But that like in Minecraft It’s even more intimidating, somehow. Thank you. I’ll take that as a complement. You’re welcome. We spend a lot of time and efforts figuring out how do we translate this?

In Minecraft, there is a mechanic where you looked at them. But that only really works with the first person or third person with a over the shoulder camera. Oh that. But if you’re running a top-down environment, you don’t really look at things. We’ll ignore that happening. I got you. Yeah.

Then, some of the things that we need was also like, “Okay, so we need a mob that has a bit of toughness to it. It moves around and spawns enemies. Do we have anything like that in Minecraft?” It’s like, “No, we don’t.

We have the mobs on this corner which is fixed and spawns mob.” So if that happens and if we find the game-play needs, then we go into like, how can we create new things that would fit into the Minecraft franchise and we do it specifically for Dungeons?

If the Minecraft team would choose to, they can bring it back into Minecraft if they want to and everything fits. But everything we design for Dungeons should be designed in such a way that they could. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. If I want to think as well as I’ve been into it in a couple of demo play Games com as well as going up against the Enderman. I’m having these pretty epic moments in boss battles that you’re going to have and I think

That’s going to be a really fun part of the game. No. I think so. By using these things, Minecraft is a big game. It sold 100- The biggest place. Biggest it is. Yeah. Yeah, 176 million units. Oh wait, hold on. Is that [inaudible] Hold on. Hold on. All right. What do you got?

It’s not mine. I think I stopped. Someone got something fun there. Unique of some sort? Oh, no. It’s the wrong button. What’s we got there? There we go. One more. What do I have? There we go. There you go. Hold on. Black one. One more. Bumpers? There we go.

You actually have a couple. So you just picked up that one there. Go pick that one. Put that on. So that changes your look, right there. Wow. Then you see, the properties of that one, the special property of that arm is that you gain speed after you do a combat drawl.

So try it. You need to back out. Okay. Back out. Then, you do a combat drawl, I guess, and then you’d see. Oh yes, yeah. It glow. Yeah So it become a little bit faster. You are what you wear. We just changed his look completely, and it’s purpose within the team as well.

If they act like a wizard style robe on them. So now, it looks like a soldier. Then, we try to make it a little bit like, “What you see is what you get.” If it looks like a heavy armor, like a light armor something, yeah, you’re good at taking damage.

If you look like the wizard or the magician, that reduces the timer on your artifact so you can use the abilities more often. That feels like something a magician would do. If it looks like something an archer would wear, you’d be good at shooting arrows.

So we tried to tap into that as much as possible. We don’t need to explain too much, you should just understand it. Yeah. We should just pick up and go, “Oh, it’s Minecraft,” but it’s Dungeon [inaudible] so it just fits together.

So it’s like, “Oh, we need to have a mob that runs towards you and then exposing your face.” We have one of those. Almost everyone understands what a creeper is and how it works. Absolutely. That’s a wonderful benefit. From my experience, they seem to kill me every single time.

I mean, you do that. Oh, there is a piggy bank. Oh it’s piggy bank. Piggy bank. Go get her. But piggy bank is obviously running from us. We can’t chase. We have the [inaudible] chase. Oh, there is an evoker. There is an evoker there.

Where did he go? Where did he go? Where did he go? Yeah. Oh no. There is a lot of things happening. Okay. You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. Oh no, I’m out of [inaudible] maybe. That evoker is pretty tough. There’s a lot of stuff going on.

They takes the money. We were meant to do this to show what happens when everyone die. I can also say, this is one of the key things we also want to do in the game where we don’t want to punish if this happens.

So we are just brought back into the game fairly quickly. In the same place. We are all back again. Oh, there he is. At the same place. Okay. So we are all back again in the game? Yeah. Audio is gone. Is it the same? No. Look out. Stay out of there. Yeah. Exactly

So you need to take out the evoker of both games, spawns these fangs in the grown, it’s like a mini boss thing. I’m alive. We dinged. There we go. Yeah. You still have to be here alive. Yeah. Take him out, he’s over the grass. Take that out. To the upper right. Almost down.

There we go. [inaudible] you can see that there’s a big mob you need to work on. Wait. I think I just got a legendary sword I’ve got on. Hawkbrand. The Hawkbrand. All right. So that increases your critical hit chance. It is a big slow two handed sword.

So that one gives a bit of, if you have a [inaudible] with that. You got [inaudible] I like it. I like it. Yeah. Here, you see as we cross this bridge, we’ll go into slightly different, we call them Stretches. It’s different types of procedure we generated from them.

So it’s still rooms that are stitched together in a randomized fashion. Well, it’s digging up too so sorry to interrupt, but since we’re still in development, we haven’t quite tested this area quite yet. Okay. Interesting. But it is also the first time I’ve seen this area of the map. Sean, that’s chicken jumping.

Oh, yes. That’s fantastic. That’s also something we tried to do. These enchanter mobs, they can enchant anything, they can enchant sheep. Anything that’s walking around? Yeah. Anything that’s moving around. That can fight you with it. Yeah. Look, they got building here. You see here, we’re in the burned down village area.

So I think, around here is probably a good time to not reveal too many secrets? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Definitely. Just to quickly hovered up ahead. Don’t want to show too much. But it’s so much fun, though.

Every time I picked up whether it’s a Games com, whether it’s on the show floor, XIO19, and for anyone who’s coming down for the event, make sure to go give a go, it’s a lot of fun. Absolutely. I’ve absolutely loved it.

The first time I’ve seen it up unto right now, and to hear that it’s coming to Xbox Game Pass in April -In April. -as well, you must be absolutely buzzing. You said there’s a couple of things you still need to test? A couple. Yeah? Yeah. Just a couple things. We’re nearly there?

We’re nearly good to go? Almost there. We are really close. Oh yeah. Love it. I think, one the most exciting things coming up to the launch of the game is seeing it all come together and seeing players shaking their hands for the first time. Absolutely.

It’s also like having the opportunity to be in shows like this and getting the hands of fans who can try it and play it, that’s one of the best and most scariest things you can do. Because how would people react?

It’s all good and proper to see trailers and show videos, but when you see people touching the game is like, “Oh, they’re doing it that way.” We didn’t think about that. Having doing that in time so you can actually see some of the things we have in the demo

That’s available here is like, “Okay, we know that this is really a weird experience.” So we have already looked at that feedback and improved certain areas of the game. You can’t do that without having player feedback. Yeah. Right.

So it’s important to us to keep close to the community and listen to that feedback. What a community you’ve got, a high Minecraft community as well, no? Absolutely. It’s so wonderful. Can we also get a big round of applause to Dave Nathan as well for his time to sharing

The game for us. It’s been so much fun.