Slimepocalypse is a hard mode survival map that will require every little bit of your slime evading skill to finish – or indeed, start. With a rudimentary reward and leveling system, this map isn’t just challenging, it’s also fresh and fun. Like an acne product targeted at teenagers, except with more slime.

I lasted approximately thirty seconds on my first attempt at this world, hence my choice of graphic for representing this map. This map is, in short, hard. If you rush into situations rashly, or if you trust in the powers of a single wooden axe to protect you, you will not last long. You need to think outside the box if you’re going to make it through your first night.

The leveling system runs right up to level 80. After that point you ‘unlock’ a chest containing a bunch of goodies that would have come in handy several hours earlier. In that respect this map emulates some of the greatest RPGs of all time.

You can’t respawn of course, but you can always re-extract the map. Some might call that cheating. I call it the only way to actually play the map. Because it’s hard. Really hard. Did I mention that it’s quite difficult? If the slimes don’t get you, the invading zombies and skeletons (complete with new pathfinding AI that makes it easy for them to walk right into your sanctuary and devour you) will.

Download Slimepocalypse Hard Minecraft Survival Map!

Fond of the tales of Camelot? Of medieval knights and dragons and damsels in distress? You’ll potentially run into two of those three things playing Faraway Avalon, a minecraft sky island survival map. A castle to explore makes survival all the more exciting on this floating island in the sky. There are secret panels and passages to uncover, not to mention hidden rooms filled with spiderwebs and other useful items of, well, usefulness. Not all the passages are safe however, so best to be careful when exploring. Sometimes it is much easier to get into things than it is to get out of them.

Players looking for a whimsical survival experience will have a lot of fun with this map, which builds on the basic survival experience without going quite so far as an adventure map. With this new island world as your own, you become the master of all you survey, build your sky island kingdom to greatness or farm enough creepers to blow the whole thing, er, sky high.

Download Faraway Avalon Sky Island Minecraft Survival Map

The trials of surviving in a box of glass in the middle of a lava flow are not as many and varied as one might imagine, but the challenges that do exist are pretty serious. There’s plenty of dirt to work with in the big box o’ supplies, but not so many grass blocks, and grass doesn’t spread as well when it is so close to molten rock. Funny that.

If you get sick of the lava everywhere, travel to the nether is possible if you manage to make a mold for obsidian. If you then make yet another mold in the nether, you could make it out into the normal world – what a great and grand that would be!

This is a very simple survival map perfect for simple survivalists who don’t need all the thrills.

Download Survive Under Lava Minecraft Survival Map…

Imagine surviving in Minecraft without actually doing any mining. Wouldn’t that be strange? This is a minecraft survival map that promotes that very mode of survival. With original survival maps coming few and far between, this is something a little different for minecraft survival fans.

One starts the game in a caverous rectangular space with wind and thunder and lightening pounding and striking outside. The atmosphere is quite nice for an attempt at creating pleasant solitude from bare rock and a couple of chests full of supplies. There’s a whole bunch of cobblestone to work with, 3456 blocks, if my calculations are close to correct. There’s also ten grass blocks, nine more than the survivalist really needs, a whole heap of dirt and eggs with which to spawn ocelots, wolves, pigs, sheep and more. There’s also the usual suspects including seeds and bits of watermelon and whatnot.

This is basically the minecraft survival version of grand designs. You have a space to work with, limited building materials and it is up to you to colonize the vast space and make it somewhat homely without succumbing to hunger or a skeleton or suchlike. Strange Survival is an interesting take on minecraft survival that will greatly appeal to those with creative urges who also like to overcome challenges.

Download Strange Survival Minecraft Survival Map!

This minecraft survival map comes in the form of an oversized ant farm. Surrounded by glass on all sides, you find yourself in a room much bigger than any room you’ve been in before. In many ways, it is minecraft within minecraft, with a superscale build that dwarfs the player.

There have been other similar maps before, but none with the attention to detail and impressive minaturization that this map imparts to the player. You are insignificant compared to a crafting table that does not come up to waist height, but towers above you far into the distance. There is a bed, but you could fall into a crevasse in the creases of the pillow and never emerge again. Amidst all this incomprehensibly large splendor, you must eek out an existence, forever staring off into a realm of possibilities your feeble frame cannot hope to endure, let alone understand.

To survive this map you must be like an ant. You must tunnel ceaselessly, you must pass hormone markers on with your antennae and you must be able to carry several times your own weight without complaint. If you can’t do that, this map might not be for you. Or it might be. Who am I to judge.

PRO TIP: If you load this map and find that the walls are bedrock, that’s because the walls are bedrock retextured to be see through. You must use the texture pack associated with the map in order to get the full effect.

Click here to download the Ant Farm Survival Minecraft Map!