Minecraft Dungeons Was Originally More Like Zelda Than Diablo

Minecraft Dungeons, which releases on May 26 for Xbox One and PC (through Game Pass), as well as Switch and PlayStation 4, has been a long time coming. The game was originally being developed with the 3DS in mind, and now in a new interview the game's director has revealed that an entirely different gameplay style was initially planned.

Talking to USGamer, Mojang's Måns Olson has revealed that the game was originally envisioned as a Zelda-style game. "We wanted to bring a new Minecraft experience to players," he says. "To make something new, you have to step quite far away from the base game." This meant designing a dungeon crawling experience close to Nintendo's beloved series in spirit and gameplay.

However, things changed over time, and Olson says that there is "not as much of that" in the final game. While the game was originally planned as a small single-player experience, during the prototyping phase the developers tested out multiplayer, and found that it made the game more fun.

"If you look at inspirations now, it's closer in terms of gameplay to games like Diablo, Torchlight, and Gauntlet," Olson told USGamer. "So absolutely there's been things that have been either implemented and then changed, or designed on paper, but that never made it into the game," he added.

Minecraft Dungeons was originally due to release in April, but it's one of several games delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.