8 of the most creative and astonishing 'Minecraft' creations ever

"Minecraft" is the hottest PC game in the world. It's like digital Lego. Kids love it. Grown ups love it. You can play to survive, overcome challenges, or — my personal favorite — build ridiculously creative things.

Advertisement

Some players stick within the bounds of the original game. Others color outside the lines with mods, or fan-made changes to the game itself.

Microsoft HoloLens Minecraft 2
A demonstration of "Minecraft" using Microsoft's HoloLens technology, a "mixed-reality" headset. Microsoft

Here are eight astonishing examples of that creativity, from players of all kinds.

Advertisement

"Project Wasteland" seeks to recreate the look and feel of "Fallout."

Project Wasteland
A screenshot from "Project Wasteland." Dvnt/Mojang

"Fallout" is one of the most popular open-world series around. It's set in a post-apocalyptic America. Radiation spoils the landscape and bottle caps are currency. The game world is enormous. Modder and builder Dvnt set out to recreate the landscape and gameplay of the series within "Minecraft" — complete with all-new creatures, a "Pip Boy" electronic device straight out of the game, and a heads-up display.

You can learn more about the ongoing project, known as "Project Wasteland," here.

Advertisement

"Atropos" is a giant, gorgeous turtle ... city ... thing.

Atropos
Carloooo/Mojang

It's hard to say what "Atropos" is. It's got buildings, caverns, giant mushrooms, smokestacks — all slotted into the intricate body of a giant turtle. The name comes from one of the three ancient Greek goddesses of fate.

The beauty of this build is in the seamless integration of macro and micro. Here are some screenshots from within the great chelonian.

Atropos turtle minecraft

Atropos minecraft

atropos innards minecraft

You can download "Atropos" and find out more about the project here.

Advertisement

This hammerhead shark sky battleship is straight out of an unwritten sci-fi movie.

Redeeemer gunship minecraft
Rossky/Mojang

"Atropos" isn't the only stunning "Minecraft" uber-megafauna around. This "Redeemer-Class Gunship" is a feat of over-the-top biomimetic design. As creator Rossky writes, "Building this 2,045,747 blocks project took 43 days with about 2-6 hours of building every day. "

If only we had an alien super-guppy invasion to give us a reason to build one of these in real life.

Advertisement

"Captive Minecraft" introduces a whole new style of gameplay.

captive minecraft
TheFarlanders/Mojang

Most famous Minecraft creations rely on huge scales. It's easy to understand why: More size takes more effort, and is therefore easily impressive. But map builder TheFarlanders took things small for "Captive Minecraft." The map begins only a block wide and grows as players reach new achievements.

The map also has the best trailer I've seen for any "Minecraft" creation:

Advertisement

Sometimes "Minecraft" players just wanna jam, so one user created this playable piano within the game.

programmable piano minecraft
Disco_/Mojang

"Minecraft" players realized pretty early on that using "redstone" — a type of game block that behaves like electric wire — they can recreate not only structures from the real world but simple electronic devices. It just takes an absurd amount of time, planning, and precision.

The most fun examples have some play function when they're finished. Here's a programmable player piano from user Disco_:

If that floats your boat, Disco_ has also made a "Sonic the Hedgehog" game map.

Advertisement

This computer built in "Minecraft" can (sort of) play "Minecraft." What if you build a computer within the computer within "Minecraft?" Minecraftception!

MiM Port Side Display_730951
Hans Lemurson/Mojang

Amazingly, there have been lots of computers built in "Minecraft." There are enough to merit their own list. (Our colleagues at Business Insider actually did just that.) But the cleverest one yet is from way back in 2011 — a purpose-built machine from creator Hans Lemurson that plays a two-dimensional version of "Minecraft" on an 8-by-8-pixel screen. The game features gravity, collisions, and movable blocks and takes a huge, intricate infrastructure to work.

So we've got a simulated world running on hardware simulated in a more complex version of that world, simulated on your computer. Wrap your noggin around that doozy.

Here's a video of the gameplay:

And here's a video explaining how it all actually works:

But that computer can only do one thing. Here's a fully functional, purpose-agnostic 16-bit computer with a four-kilobyte hard drive. (Translation: this machine can do some real computing, albeit very slowly.)

Advertisement

Holy friggin' bologna, Pokémon now live in "Minecraft!"

An unauthorized but amazing mod called "Pixelmon" blends the gameplay of "Pokémon" and "Minecraft." Hundreds of Pokémon have been built for the game. And, as the GIF above shows, they can actually get stored in pokéballs, emerge, and do their special moves.

Advertisement

A huge team of people is recreating Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Minecraft Middle Earth
Minecraft Middle Earth/Mojang

This last project is exciting because you can get involved in creating it. Its goal is to recreate Middle Earth in "Minecraft," down to the tiniest detail. Of course, this would be way too much work for one person or even a team. Instead, "build moderators" assign and supervise tasks carried out by fans on their servers. It's basically a big playground with a purpose.

Here's a trailer for the project:

Inspired to contribute an elven treehouse or two? You can get involved by visiting their website.

Video Games Gaming
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.