At Minecon 2018, Microsoft unveiled Minecraft: Dungeons, a new title from the team behind Minecraft. Minecraft: Dungeons was described to us as a "passion project," inspired by classic dungeon crawlers. Taking place in the familiar, blocky world of Minecraft, Dungeons will allow teams of up to four players to delve through a diverse range of levels on a quest for loot.
Breaking away from classic Minecraft, Dungeons will feature more advanced visuals while retaining the signature look and feel fans have come to expect. Throughout the game, players will acquire upgrades to their armor and weapons across various environmental biomes, including swamps, mines, and canyons.
Dungeons will feature new mobs, including the corrupted Arch-Illager and its minions, who have enslaved Minecraft's villagers. The trailer seems to hint at different playable class roles, as well as larger monsters lurking in the shadows.
So far, Minecraft: Dungeons has only been announced for PC, and it should launch in 2019. When I asked Mojang about the possibility of hitting other platforms, they said Minecraft has always been a game "for everyone" but had nothing further to announce. But it's fair to expect Dungeons to hit other platforms beyond PC in the future.
Village and Pillage
At Minecon 2018, Microsoft also announced a large update for Minecraft that revamps and improves how villagers work within the game, as well as the inclusion of pandas and cats, and new scripting tools which will bring true mods to the Bedrock editions of the game for the first time.
The next big update is dubbed "Village and Pillage," and will put a focus on updating the game's villager settlements in the overworld, adding new types of NPCs to interact with. Additionally, villages will vary by biome aesthetically, and also suffer raids from evil pillagers. Village and Pillage is also slated for a 2019 release.
Fortnite might be hogging the media spotlight these days, but Minecraft remains one of the world's most popular games, climbing up to 91 million active users across 154 million copies sold. You can grab Minecraft for Xbox One or Windows 10 PC for around $25.
