Lots of things are happening with Minecraft this year. We know that they’ll release Minecraft Earth, an Augmented Reality version of the title, and we also know about dungeon crawling spin-off, Minecraft: Dungeons. We hadn’t heard anything about that game since its announcement last year, but now we’ve got some details on what to expect- and it’s definitely something a little different for the series.
Sitting down with Game Informer, Executive Producer David Nisshagen talked about the game’s combat, levels, and class system. The game will have procedurally generated levels that span all the various Minecraft environments. The game will have classes, but these will simplified compared to other games of this nature. It will be based on your armor over stats. Those who pick up heavy armor are ready to be tanks, those that pick up lighter armor can easily be ranged attackers.
Enchantments are in the game as well, with weapons having multiple enchantment options as you pick them up. You can chose which enhancements to add to your weapons, depending on your playstyle or the area around you. The developers hope that coupled with easy armor options, this will allow players to be able to customize their experience without excessive menu use.
“Think of it like this: A sword drops. The sword has a couple of different enchantments options,” Nisshagen explains. “You pick one of them and enchant it with that. The next sword drops. It has the same look and feel and combat animations and all of that stuff, but it has different randomized enchantments attached to it. One of them can be super powerful for area of effect attacks. The other could be, I don’t know, poisons enemy over time. Even if it’s the same base item, they have vastly different properties on them.”
Minecraft: Dungeons will release this year exclusively on PC.