Square Enix had a small part of its space dedicated to Dragon Quest Builders, with the four demo boxes hooked up to TVs so I could watch while I waited for an opening to play. No one was resetting the machines between players, so I inherited the efforts of several players before me. This amounted to a half-built house.

I'm not particularly impressed with my fellow press members.

We should all know by now that Dragon Quest Builders is essentially Minecraft adapted to a post-game version of the original Dragon Quest. That gives us an easy way to understand the basic gameplay. So instead of trying to build on my predecessors' efforts at carpentry and construction, I decided to explore some.

First, I walked as far as I could in one direction, learning the hard way that my cute little Hero can't swim. Apparently the islands I could see in the distance were all sealed off by the Dragon Lord's curse. So I turned my eyes (and camera angle) back the other way to see what else I could find. I was the bane of Slimes and Drakkies; I delved deep into an ancient crypt, face-first (watch that first step!), as well as a means to produce my own healing unguents; I found a little grotto with a Life seed, which helped quite a bit when I decided to scale the nearest stone cliff soon after, and did battle with some Wyverns on the heights. Around the end of my allotted time, I discovered a mysterious little shrine, as well as an NPC who had been trapped inside a blocky prison.

Time was called before I could lead him back to base. The Wyvern Wing wouldn't work with two people, and I was hopelessly lost by this point, but hopefully the next player could appreciate my efforts.