Dragon Quest Builders

Dragon Quest Builders is a video game that fuses the storytelling style of Dragon Quest games with freeform block building and crafting mechanics.

The plot starts with a cutscene where the Dragonlord offers half the world to the viewer. Following a fade to black, a voice reveals that a foolish choice was made, and that humanity has fallen to the level of insects, nearing a full demise. The player character awakes in a cavernous crypt, with a voice guiding them to recover their strength. Shortly thereafter, the player character is tasked with rebuilding an abandoned and decaying city.

It was first published in 2016 by Square Enix, and was later followed by Dragon Quest Builders 2. It was released on many platforms, including Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS.

It has a webpage here on the Square Enix website and a Steam page here.

Compare with other voxel building games such as Minecraft. Unlike Minecraft, the game features predetermined maps rather than use procedural generation, as well as a tighter and more directed story creating a much different player experience.

• Action Bomb: The rockbombs the player encounters will begin to self-destruct after taking a certain amount of damage.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: Cacti are common in sandy areas.
• Amnesiac Hero: Pippa deduces the player character has amnesia after talking with them.
• An Axe to Grind: The Knight monsters wield a giant axe.
• An Interior Designer Is You: While some rooms must be initially built to specification, the player generally has the freedom to create, design, furnish them as they see fit.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Powie Yowies are Yetilike monsters covered in white fur.
• Blob Monster: The slimes are rotund blobs with a tapered top. Their blue goo or orange oil they drop following their defeat is a useful crafting item.
• Breakable Weapons: Equipment such as weapons or armor has limited durability and breaks after enough use. Some gear such as the Bashmobile and the Featherfall footwear are exempt and have unlimited durability.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: A poisonous swamp can be found in the desert in Chapter 1. In chapter 2 one features more prominently, surrounding the player's base.
• Character Customization: A limited amount of player character customization is possible when starting the game.
• Cheap Gold Coins: In a dream experienced by the player character, a shopkeeper mentions the prices of several items, ranging in the dozens to hundreds of gold coins. In normal gameplay money is not a factor.
• Chest Monster: These can occasionally be found mimicking treasure chests.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The player character can stand next to lava without issue. Even wading through lava deals relatively low damage.
• Cool Car: The Bashmobile is a trike with spikes and a flaming engine that helps the player character traverse vast expanses quickly and ram enemies.
• Cutscene: The game has an opening cutscene.
• Cyber Cyclops: The robot monsters have just one eye.
• Dawn of an Era: The player is charged with doing this, starting with the rebuilding of Cantlin.
• Dem Bones: Skeletons are one of the enemy monster mooks.
• Dronejam: A less intentional example. Characters can get in the way of certain character actions, such as building.
• Drop the Hammer: The player character can wield a giant mallet or sledgehammer for demolishing, mining, and even combat. While swords are more effective the hammer is often a handy backup weapon.
• Elemental Embodiment: In chapter 3 the player must fight off some enemies that embody the elements of ice or fire.
• End of an Age: At the start of the game humanity has abandoned most trappings of civilized life. The voice of Rubiss in the intro compares them to insects, and the player character is the only one capable of crafting things at the start of the game.
• Everything Breaks: With the right tools the vast majority of the game is destructible. There are specific essential objects that can’t be destroyed.
• Evil Sorcerer: The Dragonlord uses his power to cast the world into darkness.
• Exact Words: How the Dragonlord won in the intro is based on this trope. Specifically, he promises the Fallen Hero half the world if he defects to join him. The Fallen Hero does so and his end of the bargain is technically fulfilled......as a pathetic little building called "Half The World".
• Eye Beams: The robots in chapter three will sometimes let out a single eye beam from their monoeye.
• Fallen Hero: The intro of the game uses this trope combined with a What If. In the original canon of Dragon Quest I, the Dragonlord tries to offer the hero half the world to defect. In the original canon, the hero turns this down cold. This game is based on if that deal was actually taken and if it wasn't a Nonstandard Game Over choice.
• Fishing for Sole: Players can fish up a tattered boot, as well as other non-fish items such as monsters.
• Floating Platforms: Players can create these. Blocks can’t be placed without some supporting block, but will remain in the air even after that supporting block is removed.
• Ghost City: The city of Cantlin is just storied ruins at the start of the game.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The Colossal Crab is an enemy monster that is several times wider than the player character, and a bit taller than the player character to boot.
• Golem: These can be found as enemies in the desert. Additionally one is important to the story of the city of Cantlin.
• Green Hill Zone: Some of the area around Cantlin serves as this.
• Grimy Water: The purple water in the desert swamp damages the player character if they wade in it.
• Hailfire Peaks: Chapter 3 takes place in the lands of Kol and Galenholm, a hot and cold area respectively.
• Haunted Castle: The player is directed to one as part of a quest. There they find a castle that fell long ago to an internal threat, and are met by two ghosts.
• The Hero: The concept is brought up by Rubiss at the start of the game, who explicitly states that the player character is not a hero.
  • The game itself zigzags the concept. Rubiss specifically claims you are not the hero to save the world, merely to restore it. While partially this is to prevent a repeat of the intro, it's also a Secret Test of Character in the endgame, where you DO get to be the actual hero because unlike the original, you did not fall to temptation.
• Heart Container: Seeds of Life are consumable items that increase the Hit Points of the player character by 5.
• Hit Points: The player character has a set number of hitpoints marked as HP, displayed numerically and also proportionally on the Life Meter.
• Interface Screw: The controls are altered when the player character is affected by a confusion status.
• In-Universe Game Clock: The game has a day-night cycle.
• The Ladette: Barbella is a strong woman encountered in chapter 3 who fits right in with her male bodybuilding counterparts.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Lava behaves like water in the game, flowing nearly instantly to occupy space. The main difference is the 5 points of damage it does every so often while wading through it.
• Lethal Lava Land: The first teleportal in Kol leads to one.
• Life Meter: One is on the upper left side of the screen.
• Locked Door: Occasionally used on invulnerable structures to make the player locate a key.
• Mascot Mook: The slimes are one for the Dragon Quest series, and maintain their iconic appearance in this game. They are included on both the front of the box art in the background, and more prominently on the back of the casing.
• Mecha-Mooks: Robot monsters are encountered in chapter 3.
• Metal Slime: The classic metal slime makes an appearance starting in chapter 2, being a powerful damage sponge that flees at danger.
• Mook Maker: The burrows spawn monsters until they are destroyed.
• Not the Fall That Kills You: The player character takes fall damage if they fall from a large height.
  • This can be negated with the Featherfall footwear found in the pyramid. Flavor Text chalks the protection up to their sturdy Orichalcum construction.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons are encountered as monsters in the game.
• Palette Swap: Many monsters are simple recolors of others.
• The Plague: The disease-riddled populace is a major theme in chapter 2.
• Pyramid Power: The monsters build a giant pyramid in the desert, which serves as a dungeon.
• Quest Giver: Pippa and Rollo give the player character a number of early game quests.
• Scoring Points: Rooms and their items are worth a certain number of points. These serve a role similar to Experience Points, but for the base rather than for the player character themselves.
• Shifting Sand Land: Several.
  • One can be found through the second portal in chapter 1.
  • The barren land of dirt and sand Kol plays a prominent role in chapter 3.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Galenholm is a wintery area with massive ice lakes.
• Spikes of Doom: A useful trap buildable by the player. Spikes damage monsters, but not the player character.
• Super Drowning Skills: If the player has their character jump into a deep body of water they will plummet like a stone, and the game will cut and return them to land.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: The player character can wade through shallower water without issue, even if they become totally submerged.
• The Stations of the Canon: Compared to the original Dragon Quest I, your game progression is effectively done in reverse order to the locations you visited.
• Taken for Granite: The princess petrifies herself before the events of the game take place.
• Video Game Caring Potential: There are optional quests that involve helping out friendly monsters in a pickle or helping spirits find rest.
• The Voice: Rubiss guides the player character through the tutorial.
• Vulnerable Civilians: Zig-Zagged. When monsters attack a base the townspeople will join in the foray or otherwise be targeted and have their own health bars. However, once their Hit Points are depleted, they are simply knocked out and become Invulnerable Civilians. They can be harmed, but can’t be killed.
• We Can Rule Together: The Dragonlord makes this offer in the opening cutscene.
• When Trees Attack: Monstrous moving trees can be found in the poisonous swamp near Cantlin. These feature more prominently in the second chapter.
• World Tree: A decayed one features in chapter 2.
• X Meets Y: Dragon Quest meets Minecraft.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Dragonlord talks like this.