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.
