Minecraft Dungeons

Mojang built Minecraft Dungeons as a straightforward pitch: take the isometric loot-crawler structure Diablo popularised, strip out the genre's usual stat-sheet density, and wrap the whole thing in Minecraft's blocky, instantly recognisable art style. It's a design built to be played with other people rather than alone, and on that specific promise it delivers — up to four players, locally or online, across platforms. It's also a game whose Steam release carries one very specific, heavily documented complaint that has nothing to do with combat or loot: a meaningful share of its own reviews describe being unable to start the game's offline mode without first getting online to sign in.

Combat built to be approachable, not deep

Minecraft Dungeons plays as a real-time action RPG rather than the turn-based systems this review's other JRPG coverage tends to favour: melee, ranged and area attacks, dodge-rolling, and gear that swaps out constantly as loot drops. The Enchantment Point system is the closest thing to a build-crafting layer — defeating enemies earns points that upgrade randomly rolled enchantments on weapons and armour, and points can be refunded and reallocated when better gear turns up, which keeps experimentation cheap. It's accessible in a way that's clearly deliberate: critics broadly praised how easy it is to pick up, and just as consistently noted that the ceiling on build complexity sits well below what dedicated dungeon-crawler fans expect from the genre. For a first playthrough with friends, that trade reads as a feature. Solo, over a longer stretch, it's the thing critics kept flagging as this game's real limitation.

Levels that vary without ever losing you

Each of the game's core levels reshuffles procedurally between runs, but not from a blank slate — fixed landmark rooms stay in place as waypoints inside the shifting layout, giving every run enough variety to avoid feeling memorised while keeping players oriented inside a level they've played before. It's a sensible middle ground between full-random dungeon generation, which can feel directionless, and fully authored levels, which stop surprising you after a couple of runs, and it holds up well across a first playthrough of the base campaign.

Co-op is the actual pitch

The single biggest reason to own this game is the four-player co-op, supporting local split screen, online play and cross-platform matchmaking between Windows, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. That's a genuinely broad reach for a loot crawler, and it's the setting this game is clearly designed around — combat encounters, difficulty scaling and loot distribution all read as tuned for a group rather than a solo player working through content alone. Families and groups of friends looking for something low-commitment to play together are the audience this was built for, and it serves that audience well.

The complaint Steam Deck owners keep running into

Set against all of that, a large share of this game's negative Steam reviews raise the same specific, reproducible problem: the game's offline mode isn't actually available offline. Multiple reviews describe launching the game with no internet connection and getting stuck at the main menu because it requires a Microsoft account sign-in first, even for solo play with no intention of going online. Steam Deck owners come up repeatedly and specifically, since a handheld device without guaranteed connectivity is exactly the scenario this restriction breaks hardest — several reviews describe buying the game specifically for portable, connection-free play only to find it unplayable exactly where they needed it. This isn't a rare edge case buried in the review sample; it's frequent enough, and specific enough in its wording across independent reviews, to be treated as a real, documented limitation of the Steam release rather than an isolated configuration issue.

What the DLC tail actually costs

Beyond the base NZ$31.95, six paid story DLC packs run roughly NZ$8.70 each, a Hero DLC bundle prices at NZ$31.95 — matching the base game's own price — and three smaller Adventure Passes add another NZ$5.90 apiece. A meaningful share of negative reviews frame that specifically as a complaint about procedurally generated content being sold piecemeal rather than expanded for free, one describing it as "paying for more dungeons that should be free from a random generator." That's a fair characterisation of the tension: the base game's own dungeons already reshuffle for free, which makes charging per additional biome a harder sell than DLC that adds a genuinely new system or mechanic would be.

Verdict

Seven out of ten. Minecraft Dungeons does what it set out to do — an approachable, blocky loot crawler that plays best with three friends rather than alone, at a low base price that makes it an easy pickup for a group. What keeps it from climbing higher is specific rather than vague: a build system that critics and players alike found shallow past a first playthrough, a DLC tail that charges repeatedly for content its own procedural systems generate for free, and — the complaint this game's own Steam reviews raise most insistently — an offline mode that isn't actually usable offline for a meaningful number of players, Steam Deck owners especially. Buy it for a co-op night with friends. Check your setup first if you were planning to play it solo, offline, or on the go.

Price, DLC list and review counts checked 3 August 2026.