Minecraft Players Spend 5 Years Building a To-Scale New York City Map

A talented group of Minecraft players have managed to build a full to-scale replica of New York City in the game. This ambitious Minecraft project has been created over the last five years, and it’s fair to say that the efforts of this group of players have well and truly paid off.

Over the last 15 years, the Minecraft community has continued to impress with increasingly ambitious builds. The game’s core concept is based on creativity, so it makes sense that the community would use the tools at its disposal to create some amazing builds. What has always been so impressive is the variety of builds. While some choose to recreate recognizable places from real life, others use Minecraft to pay homage to their other favorite franchises in interesting ways. One recent example was the Minecraft player who created a massive Halo-inspired world, bringing an entire halo ring to life in the game. Despite the game’s age, the community isn’t slowing down, either, with Minecraft builds arguably only getting more ambitious over time.

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This is What New York City Looks Like To Scale in Minecraft

YouTuber MineFact recently shared a progress report on their 1:1 scale version of New York City built entirely in Minecraft, which according to the player, has been built by an entire team across “many sleepless nights” over the last five years. The incredible Minecraft build recreates over 50,000 buildings across the iconic city, with the video showing all the progress made across various boroughs. The accuracy is pretty ridiculous, and even features a bunch of small details that make the map feel as realistic as possible. It’s these small details that really capture the vibrance of New York City, but this project is going even further, going as far as to build the subway in its entirety. According to one builder, “we have many stations and tunnels already complete.”

According to the YouTuber, the project started during the COVID-19 pandemic, and “how we pulled it off, and all the technical challenges along the way would take a full video on its own.” It started in the World Trade Center district, before moving to other areas such as Tribeca, Little Italy, and Queens. Despite all of the progress made so far, the team is “definitely not stopping now.” MineFact claims that the project will “have to continue for a few more years” until it’s fully complete, which could make it one of the longest-running Minecraft fan projects out there. The New York City recreation is part of the wider BuildTheEarth project, which aims to recreate the entirety of planet Earth in Minecraft. This project is always looking for volunteers for players who want to help out in any small way they can.

Ultimately, this kind of build is only possible because of Mojang’s ongoing support for Minecraft, with regular updates still being released for the game after 15 years. The developer recently revealed the first features of Minecraft‘s next game drop, confirming that new versions of baby farm mobs are on the way. There is still no release date for the next game drop, although players can already test the new baby farm mobs by hopping into the most recent Java snapshot and Bedrock beta right now. With Mojang now releasing Minecraft content more regularly, players can expect plenty more to come from the game over the next year.