Review: Minecraft Dungeons

Minecraft maps Dungeons is a capable all-ages dungeon crawl that, while doesn't use its license to anything like its full potential (see Dragon Quest Builders 2 for how to do it right), is still good fun once it gets moving. The variety of enemies keeps you on your toes, and the various skills and weapons make for plenty of experimentation in figuring out the best way to take them on. Each level has at least a couple of secrets to chase after, ranging from obvious to head-scratchingly obscure, and finding everything while collecting all the gear will keep players busy for hours whether fighting single- or multiplayer. Just be aware that if you've got any experience with the genre, the difficulty selections on the levels are there for a reason. The younger crowd deserves a good intro to the world of dungeon crawling and Minecraft Dungeons provides that nicely.


The Bogged looks straight out of a swamp monster movie and is more dangerous than the skeleton as it will shoot the player with poison arrows. The swamp is not the only place that gamers will find the Bogged, as they will also spawn as an enemy in the new Trial Chambers , a combat system in which players must defeat mobs in order to progress and be rewarded. Skeletons are terrifying enough, but this Bogged version takes it to another le


The idea is that the chicken is trapped and bred. When the babies grow up, they are burned by the lava and automatically turned into cooked chicken. It may be a little gruesome, but gamers must remember they aren't real chickens! To build this requires no work at all. Simply place an enclosed block of lava over a fence block, giving some space below for the baby chickens to be bred. There are a lot of tutorials for this on YouTube, but Triloms' is a great o

From the same people that brought us Game of Thrones and Tales From the Borderlands comes their newest decision based game, Minecraft: Story Mode. Telltale Games is notorious for their rigorous storytelling and memorable characters and this time is no different. You play as Jesse, regardless of which gender you choose at the beginning, who is on a mission to create the greatest build at EnderCon, (Enderman Convention if you didn't catch on). The winner gets to meet the great Gabriel of the Order of the Stone, a group of people who slayed the Ender Dragon years ago but have disbanded since. Of course, the episode would be nothing without some kind of story of revenge that spirals the characters into an adventure that they would have never seen themselves in. Someone sets out to create a Wither, a huge monster that sets out to consume everything, leaving you and your friends to seek out the Order of the Stone. You are accompanied by your friends Olivia, confidant and trusty, Axel, large and loyal, and Reuben, a pig. Telltale hit the nail on the head this time with a different, family-friendly take on one of their main installments. No prior knowledge of the original building game is needed, but it would help if you had some basic terminology.

Between each level is a brief stop back at base camp, which is a fairly empty area that honestly feels like it's missing content. The shops let you spend the green gems found throughout the levels on a random piece of equipment or accessory, and...that's it. There's a map on a table to choose the next level or you can just hit the Select button to do the same thing. Sometimes there's a random chest somewhere in the scenery if you wander about. It's a good amount of space, nicely decorated, with little in it.


The simple raid farm takes away the need for this battle. The mobs are spawned in a mock village and instantly burn to death using a water and lava system with the drops falling below into a hopper and chest system. This does not give XP or reward the player with the Hero of the Village status effect, which grants cheaper trade from Villagers. The Raid Farm is simply for the loot. There are some advanced versions of this build, but wattles has a simple one on YouTu


Updated February 22, 2025 by Ben Painter: The latest major update, Tricky Trials, has been released for some time now. Gamers can head back into their worlds to explore older features and build up their worlds. A great way to do this is to start on some easy Redstone contraptions that will make life easier in the game. Some of the ideas in this list are insanely easy to


This is where the quick and simple Ender Pearl Station comes into play. At a simple touch of a button, it fires out a full stack of Ender Pearls ready for the player to use. It uses a simple Redstone system which fires out a signal that pushes out the item when the button is pressed. Asif Gaming talks through this build on YouTu

The standard Spiders would be enough to frighten any arachnophobe, but Cave Spiders take things to the next level. These eight-legged monstrosities have a sickly green tint to their bodies and lurk in abandoned minesha

The story also deserves notice. Minecraft itself might not have as intense of a story, but Telltale was able to grab some of the more important factors of Minecraft and create a lore to follow and better understand what the characters with. Previously, your goal was to mine for enough materials and minerals to make a portal to the End to slay the Ender Dragon. Now, that story doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, because the ones who slayed the Ender Dragon were the members of the Order of the Stone. The members are essentially the people that you would have normally gone to the End with to help you fight the dragon, so it almost makes it seem like you were some kind of legendary hero for being able to do that if you were able to do so in the past. Everyone else in the episode doesn't have that same goal and, funny enough, don't look at all like the villagers that you sometimes wander upon in the original game. The storytelling and characters leave you with enough of an impression that leaves you waiting in anticipation for the next episode. You begin to make connections with your friends and build a relationship with them in the span of one single episode so it leaves you wanting to know what will come next for this party of builders.