I reviewed this map back when it was in its early stages and was just blown away by it then. This is a map of the entire planet earth made, to scale, in minecraft. It’s huge of course, just under half a gig of data to download but man oh man is it basically the perfect minecraft map. With the minecraft earth map you can finally live your dream of conquering the world without reality getting in your way. From the great deserts to frozen wastelands, this is a snapshot in time compiled by using satellite images from NASA to render the world as it was around the end of the 21st century.

Was that a Matrix reference? Oh yes, because you are now free to create your own matrix on this landscape. There are no cities, but there are signs where cities are currently located, so if you want to rebuild New York or Paris and give yourself a penthouse apartment that looks out over the Champs y Broadway, that’s doable. This really is an exciting minecraft, one of the very few ‘must downloads’ out there. It comes in two formats, SSP and SMP, so you can play it singleplayer and multiplayer.

Download the Planet Earth Minecraft Map! (Final Version)

A survival CTM map, Giant Creeper Survival involves a really, really giant creeper. A creeper many hundred times your size. Your mission? To dissect the creeper, find all the colored wool blocks and complete the monument.

The first challenge this map throws at the player is actually getting to the creeper. Bridge building is therefore a very important skill.

As the sun sets on your first day on the small island in the sky, the fire in the creeper’s eyes seems to grow higher, inviting you into its dangerous belly. If you’re playing on anything other than peaceful, you’ll behold the touching, yet entirely creepy vision of baby creepers being spawned in the mouth of the mother creeper.

Exploration is quickly rewarded in this survival map, so don’t be shy to tear down every structure you see. The innards of the creeper are a dangerous place to be sure, but there are rewards for those who valiantly persist in their mission despite the many dangers.

Click here to download Giant Creeper Survival Minecraft Map!

This is a minecraft map based on the movie ‘Saw’, which makes it promising out of the gate. Even though it is largely made of snow, one of the softest blocks in the minecraft universe, there’s an air of menace to it which I quite enjoyed. At times the map goes well out of its way to disorient you, and with frequent sign based interjections from the sometimes heavy handed JigSteve himself, it’s pretty hard to shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen.

If you get stuck, try looking up. Sometimes escape routes are located in the ceiling. Some might call that a spoiler, I call it saving your sanity so you don’t stand at the beginning of the map for half an hour waiting for something to happen.

The map is also quite unashamed about making you leap into lava just because you made a bad decision. It’s not so much about punishing you as it is about making you punish yourself. Note that you *need* to sleep in the beds provided after the start of the map or you’ll spawn outside it and have to re-extract it all over again.

For a good dose of psychological minefare (that’s like warfare, but with minecraft) and the escape story of a lifetime, you should play Chambers of Jigsteve.

Download Chambers of JigSteve Minecraft Parkour/Puzzle Map

A minecraft adventure / puzzle map set in an Egyptian tomb, King Spoon’s Tomb is full of dangers for the unwary explorer. Lord Canarvon himself would think twice before setting foot even in the very outermost of chambers of the resting place of the great King Spoon.

This map does contain a pet peeve of mine, which is a difficult lava based parkour challenge right at the very beginning. Maybe my parkour skills lag substantially behind those of the average Minecraft player, but I get really tired of landing in lava fifty times before I even start a map. If that sounds annoying to you, skip this map because there are even harder lava challenges ahead. This is not a map that holds your hand and pets the back of it and tells you how wonderful you are. This is a map that goes out of its way to hurt you in ways that are inventive and amusing if your humor turns in that direction.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there is quite an element of maze solving involved in this adventure map, passages upon passages wind their way through the tomb. The mazes are in no way kind and the phrase ‘dead end’ means more than just having to turn around and try another route. If you find yourself at a dead end, that means yo end is dead. There’s no end to the viciousness the creator has unleashed upon the player, oftentimes employing multiple means of dealing damage to remove any possible hope for survival. I found myself actually reluctant to even try to get rewards because the punishments were so frequent and harsh.

If you get tired of the tomb, it’s quite fun to wander the map and look at the other half abandoned builds that are scattered about the place. The creator tells you specifically not to do this, but hey, he’s not around – is he?

King Spoon’s Tomb is one heck of a high quality minecraft adventure map and it’s not a bad puzzle map either. It might very well push you to the brink of sanity, but don’t let that stop you from downloading it.

Download King Spoon’s Tomb Minecraft Hard Adventure Map!

At first this Jungle Island map seemed like all the maps before it. An island. In minecraft. That requires survival. But then I found the underground chamber of secrets with dungeon effects and I realized that I was… really quite lost actually.

This is a surprisingly exciting survival map, mostly because of the exploration aspect which comes into play as soon as you start playing the map. There’s also the opportunity to visit the end and slay a dragon, that quintessential minecraft experience that makes so much sense in the context of the game. So much sense.

If that’s not enough, there are challenges! All sorts of challenges. Build villages for villagers, construct farms and generally colonize the living heck out of the verdant forest environment.

Unofficial challenge:

Deforest the entire island.

Download Jungle Survival Island Minecraft Map!