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.
