Lego announced a city builder called Lego Skylines last month and we all collectively said: "Oh yeah, duh." A landscape of colorful bricks snapping together into a metropolis from the godlike perspective we already view our real life Legos just makes sense.
Hold on, what about the brand I affectionately refer to as "digital Legos"? Minecraft should by rights have spawned a city building spinoff by now. How were Lego and Mojang not competing over this category of PC players years ago?
Minecraft as a city builder:
It makes sense
- Templated structures like villages, temples, and fortresses are already a staple in vanilla Minecraft
- Villagers: we love to exploit 'em and give them jobs
- Minecraft players love to build, why not cities?
- The first generation of Minecraft players (me) are Old™ now and we can appreciate slower, strategic games
- There are Minecraft mods for this, so players definitely like the idea
- Minecraft already has several spinoffs in other genres (Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends)
Maybe it doesn't?
- This is so obvious that maybe Mojang has prototyped one internally and it just wasn't great
- Maybe it's on the to-do list but Mojang hasn't found a partner studio to work on it
- Minecraft spinoffs have a mixed track record. Minecraft Dungeons is good but Minecraft Legends is not.
I am totally in favour of the concept. Minecraft villages are just cool as heck and I want to build at that scale instead of block by block:
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Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.
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