PAX Aus 2019 - Hands on with Minecraft Dungeons

Xbox brought a number of titles to PAX Australia this year and one of them, was the highly anticipated Minecraft Dungeons, which takes the world of Minecraft and throws in a whole new viewpoint, as well as gameplay. This marked the first time the game was playable in Australia, so I knew I had to give it a go, so I did, and it was good.

There is a very clear inspiration for Dungeons, which is not a bad thing, players of games like Diablo or even Gauntlet, will feel a sense of familiarity about what they are seeing on the screen and for good reason, games based around exploring dungeons and such are great fun. For the demo that was at PAX Aus, there were teams of four that were given the task of taking down a necromancer, with the challenge first, to find their lair. The game allows you to play solo, which I did at the end, but for the first attempt, it was myself and a few other players who jumped in and attempted to storm the labyrinth that hosted our target and after finding the entrance, we needed to source a key.

Eventually, the key was discovered, but this was where the fun of a live code came into play, some issues with the network, meant the game had to be restarted and I was fine with that. What it allowed me to do, was to try other things out, you can run in with A and simple bash away at the enemies, or you can use other items and potions to deal out some damage. The Right trigger allowed me to fire arrows at enemies, with most spiders being taken out in one hit, zombies took a few and skeletons took one or two more, with distance playing a factor. As I delved deeper into the labyrinth, more enemy options appeared, with my arrows beginning to prove ineffective against their armour, so it was time to mix it up and with arrows for distance, sword for up close and rolls to look cool, I was on a roll, pun not intended, but then the same issue appeared.

For my third attempt, I simply went solo, which provided another insight to the game, I ran the same path, mixing up my attacks, picking up items and armour left on the ground by fallen foes, but I made a lot of progress in getting through the game. What was happening was that there were significantly less enemies being thrown at me, then there was when more players were in the world, which was evident by only one spawning mini boss. Previously, the room that contained him, had two of them and they can spawn as many zombies as they choose and shoot orbs of dangerous light at you, so running into a room and taking down the first, then not finding a second, proved to be quite a relaxing experience. In addition to that, some rooms that spawned a horde of skeletons to defeat, would only spawn a handful or none at all, it varied, and I was ok with that.

What I took away from it, apart form the fun of live code, is that with my three different runs at the game I was able to try multiple ways of playing, I was able to experience multiple enemy options and I had fun each time. Minecraft Dungeons is coming out in 2020, but no set release date yet and players will be able to pick it up on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.