Top 10 Best Minecraft Challenges!

Take popular game type King of the Hill, and replace the Hill with… a ladder? Sure, that works, and it’s actually a lot of fun too. Best played as a free-for-all with four players; the goal is to climb a giant ladder to the top and stay there for an agreed upon amount of time, usually five minutes. Sounds simple enough, right? Not when the other competitors are shooting arrows at you and trying to knock you off. It’s a pulse-pounding and nerve-wracking experience being at the top and counting down the seconds… and if you get knocked off, well you better climb back up fast.

An excellent example of a game type changing the core fundamentals of how you play the game, QuakeCraft takes—yep, you guessed it—Quake III Arena, and incorporates it into Minecraft fantastically. Usually played in maps with ten to fifteen other competitors, you all have a railgun that instakills anyone you land a direct hit on, with a 1.5 second reload time between each shot. You get coins for kills, sprees and victories, which you can then use to purchase cosmetic and weapon upgrades, or even maps. It’s a good way to get players coming back, as they can flaunt their success.

#8: Survival Island

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If you’re playing on Hard mode, it’s challenging enough as it is to survive in Minecraft. You’ll starve to death, enemies will kill you in a couple of hits, and zombies can break through wooden doors, but if you want an even greater challenge, Survival Island has you covered. Traditionally played on a small island where the only rule is to not leave, you’ll have the bare necessities to keep you alive, but if you play smart, you’ll find a way to keep yourself alive forever. There are a ton of maps to choose from, so there’s no problem if you master one. Just jump straight to the next.

The beauty about Minecraft is that players have the potential to create anything they can picture in their heads–well, mostly anything—which results in some great competitive maps to play in. Capture the Flag is an immensely popular game type found in almost every multiplayer FPS, and it works wonders in Minecraft too. With various map designs and flag placements, it never gets stale. It’s a great team-building exercise also, as you need to communicate with one another to decide who’s a defender and who’s an attacker. If you communicate effectively, you’ll most likely emerge victorious.

#6: TNT Olympics

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Combining TNT with the Olympics probably isn’t the first thing you’d think of when deciding on a new challenge, but it works in the world of Minecraft, and is a hell of a lot of fun to boot. Utilizing TNT in one way or another, TNT Olympics takes your favorite sports and adds a slightly explosive twist to them. Created by SethBling, he hosted¬–and participated—in the games with three other Minecraft Youtubers, and the best part is that you can download the map too and play with your friends. Just make sure you don’t get too competitive.

#5: Tetris Escape

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Okay, you’ve already figured that by hearing the word ‘escape’ added to the end, this isn’t traditional Tetris. Exciting, stressful, entertaining and panic inducing, you’ll feel a variety of emotions while playing this challenge. Tetris Escapes replicates what it would be like to be literally in the game, and the block falling speed was on max…and there were anvils that’d crush your head. Yep. The aim is to dodge the falling blocks and anvils and use them as stepping stones to get higher to eventually escape. The thing is, as you get higher, the distance for them to drop shortens, which means you’re reflexes and on-the-spot thinking is going to be continually pushed to the limit.

As Parkour as something can be with what you can do in Minecraft, this challenge has you racing against other players to reach the end of an obstacle course which mainly has you jumping from block to block that progressively gets more challenging. As with anything, the fact that it’s a race has you going as fast as you can, which ultimately messes you up as some of the courses require patience and perfect timing. A lot of the maps are varied and employ numerous additional challenges, such as jumping over lava pits or sliding along small ice platforms. If you get sick of the straightforward ones, there are also vertical maps to keep you engaged.

#3: The Walls

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A challenge that combines survival with PVP, The Walls utilizes the core fundamentals of Minecraft in that you have to craft weapons and defenses to survive, and ultimately come out victorious in a four-way PVP match. The map is divided into quarters, each of them blocked off by giant walls—hence the name—and you have 15 minutes to craft and search for items hidden in the map that will give you an advantage when the walls come down. When they do come down, prepare for mayhem, as you engage in a four-way free for all.

#2: Race for the Wool

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A challenge meant for big teams of two. Race for the Wool has two teams pitted against each other on two symmetrical maps in an attempt to find three pieces of wool. The first team to find all three wins. Competing in identical maps, only a few blocks apart, players can shoot at each other with bows. Games are long and can last to up to an hour or longer. Dodging enemy fire and traversing dangerous dungeons to find wool proves to be a surprisingly fun activity, and with a lot of maps to choose from, no two playthroughs are the same.

#1: The Hunger Games

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Probably the entry with the least amount of explanation required, it’s also amazingly fun to play. Just like in the movies and books, players must fight to the death and remain the last one standing to be victorious. Slaughtering other players while trying to keep yourself alive has a surprising amount of strategy to it. Do you run to the chests in the middle for weapons, and risk being destroyed at the start? Or do you quietly slip away and use guerilla tactics to defeat your foes, while scavenging the play area for any useful items? One thing’s for certain, as more and more people are killed off, the tenser it gets.