Even the way it trots out familiar enemy types – shambling zombies, detonating Creepers, skeleton archers – as a way to explain the simplistic mechanics is a clever use of series’ shorthand: “Of course you run away from Creepers!” my daughter explained as one blew up in my face while I idly swung at it with a sword. The vibe is of baby’s first ARPG, and while Minecraft Dungeons never quite shakes that association, accessibility shouldn’t be confused for a lack of depth or smart design. Nothing about this is new or pretends to be. The hope is of levelling up your adventurers further and outfitting them with increasingly rare goodies. Like most dungeon-crawlers, this one expects you to revisit those potted areas, most of which admittedly strain the definition of the word “dungeon”, on higher difficulties and with better gear. Minecraft Dungeons isn’t a long game, then – it has nine levels, each contained in a unique biome with its own gimmick, and a couple of secret areas, all of which you can traipse through front-to-back in a few hours. Where once you’d descend into the bowels of a jagged landscape to forage for resources with your own working-class hands, now you bonk the game’s enemies over the head and goodies spill out where once you’d retreat to the relative safety of sunshine to turn those minerals and materials into a house or a castle or any number of other things, now you sleep at a campsite and use them to beef up your pixelated explorer with better weapons and equipment so they can venture into the wilderness once more. This proved to be a good decision, in part because it was handy having a cute little talking glossary on-hand, but mainly because the game’s clearly designed for that kind of laidback family-friendly experience.Īnd the blend of Minecraft’s anything-goes creative ecosystem and bizarre internal mythology with a just-deep-enough ARPG works surprisingly well. Naturally, then, I recruited her as my couch co-op partner for Minecraft Dungeons, Mojang’s new Diablo-lite dungeon-crawling spin-off that’s available for free on Xbox Game Pass and at a pretty reasonable budget price everywhere else. Most of my Minecraft knowledge is second-hand, gleaned from my daughter endlessly playing Creative mode and constructing elaborate fortresses to hide away in.
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