Mojang Studios’ Minecraft remains one of the most popular games out there. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of runner-up Grand Theft Auto 5 as the best-selling video game of all time, and at the end of last year it was announced that Minecraft YouTube content has accumulated over a trillion views. This success has afforded the Swedish developer opportunities to expand the scope of its brand, including spin-off projects like Minecraft Earth, Minecraft: Education Edition, and Minecraft Dungeons.
The action-RPG Minecraft Dungeons never hit the same heights of popularity as its older sibling. Whereas Minecraft is a sandbox game that excels at creating a relaxing atmosphere and opening up player creativity, Minecraft Dungeons is a more stressful dungeon-crawler in the vein of Blizzard’s Diablo. However, the two share voxel aesthetics in a way that make them instantly recognizable. It would be fun to see a future update improve upon Dungeons by opening the ability for players to create custom maps in the ARPG format.
Minecraft Dungeons Updates Since Launch
The original Minecraft Dungeons release in May 2020 was generally well-received. Having it be a day-one Xbox Game Pass title was a huge boon for the multiplayer experience, though this was expected given Mojang is part of Xbox Game Studios following Microsoft’s $2.5 billion acquisition in 2014. Yet groups of friends hoping to grind out the best loot for their characters needed more to throw those characters against.
Luckily six DLC expansions released for Minecraft Dungeons, culminating with the “Echoing Void” DLC in July 2021 that focused on Minecraft’s End dimension. Alongside this came Minecraft Dungeons: Ultimate Edition, a version of the game bundled with all six expansions for $39.99 - or as a digital upgrade for $19.99 if players owned the base game. The official blog post announcing this update promised Echoing Void would not be the end of support for Dungeons.
In January 2022, Mojang followed up by releasing Minecraft Dungeons’ Cloudy Climbs Adventure Pass. The Adventure Pass follows a seasonal model akin to various live-service games on the market, with Season 1 promising fans over 45 new rewards on a premium track. These include pets, skins, emotes, and capes, though it does not appear larger content dumps like traditional maps are in the cards. Instead, players gained access to the Tower, a solo roguelike activity about running through randomized floors to get new gear or enchantment points.
Minecraft Dungeons Creative Mode Has a Lot of Potential
If the future of Minecraft Dungeons is more about cosmetics than it is expansive content, Mojang would be wise to lean on the creativity of its fans. One can hardly throw a stone in Minecraft social media forums without coming across intricate custom maps, recreations of real and video game locales alike, or other creative endeavors such as working Redstone technology. The nigh-endless possibilities for what can be done in this sandbox has even influenced live events amid the pandemic, with one recent story showcasing a South Korean university that held its entrance ceremony in Minecraft.
While it would be impossible to translate Minecraft’s mechanics into Minecraft Dungeons, and vice versa, the fact they both use the same building materials suggests there could be a way to scan custom maps within Minecraft and translate them into ARPG levels using player-selected enemy spawn points. Even if the ability to move pre-existing custom maps between projects is a moonshot, the idea that Mojang could launch the Minecraft Dungeons equivalent of creative mode is an appealing way to give it indefinite content.
It’s entirely possible that Mojang wants to keep Minecraft Dungeons separate from the creative side of Minecraft proper for the sake of building its own identity. There’s a fair amount of logic to this, but at the same time it’s hard to deny how well the idea of custom Dungeons maps may pan out. If Minecraft players can recreate the entirety of Majora’s Mask on a whim, there’s no telling what kind of interesting dungeon-crawlers could arise from open creative tools.
Minecraft Dungeons is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
