LEGO® Minecraft "The Dungeon" Review

You have mined down a few levels and are starting to find some great deposits of iron and coal. Everything is going great until you hear that unmistakable groan of a zombie. You decide to punch through a few more walls before heading to the surface and... you wind up at a monster spawning cave/dungeon.

That seems to be the premise of this LEGO® Minecraft set. It's not a very large set (I think it may in fact be the smallest at 219 pieces), but it's still a lot of fun. It's also an inexpensive way to try out the Minecraft sets as these can be found for $20 or less (as of 2015).

Build

This set took me about 30 minutes to build. The base construction is wider than it seems, which gives the whole set a nice footprint. There isn't much height to it; it only goes up to six blocks high in the main dungeon area. There are two doorway openings for the mini-figs to go through. Above and on the outside, there are sand blocks and a small lava pool with a cactus. This is kind of an odd choice but I suppose there was a reason behind it, although I've never seen that in the game.

The set includes a "Steve", two zombies, and... bricks.

This set has two movable play features. The first is the monster spawner, which has a representation of a zombie being made inside the spawner. You can spin a drum built into the base to make this spin around, but that's all it does. I feel like all the pieces and gears involved in this could have been put to better use.

One of the cool movable features let's the zombie
"spawn" into the dungeon. This is activated by flipping a brick
on the backside.

The second moving feature is also related to the monster spawner. Basically, it's a way to have the zombie hidden from view, then you flip the assembly forward to make the zombie "spawn" into the dungeon. This is a much cooler looking, and functioning, feature on this set.

Value

I think the value on this set is about right for the bricks and figures included.. For $20, you get 219 pieces and that includes three mini-figures. You also get one iron pickaxe.

It's an easy guess that you get a Steve with this set, but I was more excited about getting a couple of zombies, since I had none.

The only negative I have with this set is the rebuild options. On the box (as is with all the Minecraft sets) it's prominently displayed that you can "Build your own creations!", but I just do not see any rebuild options here. The only official changes they give you are to take some of the sand pieces and make a stair step down to the dungeon. 

Overall, this is a nice set that is fun to build and has some fun play value. It also makes a nice display piece that's great to look at.