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With a game like Minecraft that players often describe as being completely limitless, there are bound to be some who look to test that assertion. Limitless is a big claim, after all, and the prospect that, with enough time and effort, players can build anything their heart desires is very tempting.
This very prospect has led thousands upon thousands of players to set themselves incredibly grand goals over the game's 12-year history. Many never stick with their convictions long enough to see the project through, but the right team in the right place at the right time can create some truly awe-inspiring giant Minecraft builds.
10 Westeros
Created By: WesterosCraft
When it comes to Minecraft's giant builds, one of the more common occurrences is that they're trying to recreate something. Fans of books, games, films, and TV are nothing if not dedicated, and WesterosCraft is one of the best encapsulations of that.
The team behind this project is putting together a perfect recreation of Westeros from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and depicted in Game of Thrones. The community is open, and the server is available. The project is currently 72% completed, with the majority of the world's most iconic landmarks standing tall, and progress is being made regularly.
9 Mount Olympus
Created By: ChaosOlymp
A stunningly beautiful project, this build puts together one of the most famous mythological sites and is home to the Ancient Greek Gods, Mount Olympus. It hits all the marks of what Olympus has traditionally been represented as, with pristine white buildings formed around a mountain above the clouds.
It goes beyond that, though, and adds some unique touches that breathe life into this depiction of the monument. The choice of light blue for the roofs contrasts perfectly with the green from the vegetation growing everywhere it can. It has such a light and inviting atmosphere and feels truly like the paradise it is often described as.
8 Cyberpunk Project
Created By: ElysiumFire
One of the strongest aesthetics in fiction, Cyberpunk can often be hard to recreate in Minecraft. The game's style and block palette suit it a lot better towards medieval/ancient architecture and putting something modern together usually require a lot of effort redesigning textures.
Cyberpunk Project manages it with just the base textures of Minecraft, though, and the result is incredible. Inspired by (but not a recreation of) Cyberpunk 2077's Night City, this city comes to life in the most real way possible just by adding a shader. Even without that, the builders behind this captured the style in a way no one has ever done before.
7 Mages College of Meridia
Created By: Block_Fortress
High-fantasy is a genre that Minecraft's style is geared towards. Plenty of blocks can be creatively used to look like entirely fictional materials and elements, even magical energy itself. The Mages College of Meridia takes this concept and uses it to its fullest.
The basic shape will look familiar to anyone who has visited Skyrim's College of Winterhold, but the details are far more impressive when getting in close. Every wall is layered and springs to life despite mainly using a grey palette. Additionally, the inside feels mysterious and magical, with grand statues in dimly lit chambers.
6 The City of Adamantis
Created By: Jamdelany1
One of the oldest giant builds out there, The City of Adamantis is a wholly original design and shows just how creative the Minecraft community has been right from the outset. Visually it brings in vibes of a grand Imperialistic City. The kind of place where a small group of plucky teenage rebels would overthrow an autocratic metaphor for parents.
The architecture is incredible. The way the whole city slowly moves up the tiers from the entrance all the way to the spire is magnificent, and every building has a unique feel while staying true to the overall style. Given its age, the creator would've had a far more limited block palette to choose from than the builders of today, so it's an awe-inspiring accomplishment.
5 Witchcraft and Wizardry
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Created By: The Floo Network
On the surface, this 1:1 recreation of Hogwarts is already a fantastic achievement. It has careful attention to detail and does a wonderfully creative job of creating places that weren't properly described in the Harry Potter books or shown in the films. However, that's not what makes it so impressive.
The fact is that this map isn't just a place for players to gawk at and get lost in. It's a full Harry Potter RPG experience, with locations from all over the wizarding world. So much fantastic work has been done on the project to the point where players don't need to install any mods to make it work. The world does it all and takes fans on a great adventure.
4 The Kingdom of Cipher
Created By: Circleight
This is another relatively old build, and one that is so jam-packed with detail and wonder that even looking at a single image leaves players struggling to take it all in. The grand castle that is the centerpiece of the build is utterly jaw-dropping to look at and feels like it merges all of the most beautiful parts of real-world architecture into one style. What's more mind-blowing is the fact that it is the work of a single person.
The amazingly creative person behind this build went above and beyond, though, because there's a whole dosage of lore to go with it. The nine pillars around the castle represent different Gods, each of whom embodies a part of human existence. It has to be seen to be believed.
3 Greenfield
Created By: THEJESTR
It's common to see giant builds like this based on real-world places. Some of the world's most beautiful cities translate well to Minecraft, and the USA's tendency to build cities in grids makes them perfect for this game all about cubes. However, creating an entirely fictional modern city from scratch is something else entirely.
That's what the team behind Greenfield did, though. The city is unbelievably expansive and has had tonnes of unique buildings over its 10-year history, with almost everyone having interiors. Somehow, the project is only classified as being 20% complete, despite already being utterly enormous, so there's plenty more to come.
2 Breath of the Wild's Hyrule
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Created By: Dineah
A very ambitious project built almost entirely by a single person, this map brings the open world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild into Minecraft. The game's various biomes and climates are well suited to Breath of the Wild's world design, and it can be clearly seen in the map from above.
The world hasn't been released for download yet, but the maker is looking for people to help put together custom NPCs and textures to place around the map. It looks fantastic, and the time and effort it takes to translate the entirety of one game into another is commendable.
1 The Uncensored Library
Created By: Reporters Without Borders
This project is backed by the Reporters Without Borders scheme and is more about what's inside it than how it looks outside. This is a library stuffed to the brim with works that are censored in certain countries around the world. This project takes advantage of the fact that Minecraft is a game that very few world governments have banned or censored, unlike many other games.
This allows people in countries like China and Saudia Arabia, where many texts are heavily censored or outright banned, to access free press. As much as the writing is the main focus, the building itself looks fantastic. The flags of all nations hang in the massive central dome, and each countries' area has a different feel to it.
Minecraft was released on November 16, 2011, and is available for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, and many other platforms.