Spooky Spires

When you buy a castle, you want to get your money’s worth. Tall spires, huge defensive walls, super spooky ghosts and preferably a huge body of water to surround it on all sides. But you know what estate agents are like. “Ghosts aren’t real!” they say. “We’re not estate agents!” they say. “Please get out of my house and stop harassing the cat!” they say.

Sigh. I don't know. It’s almost like they don’t want a supreme leader to sit in a high tower and preside over the downtrodden peasants as they toil at the barren earth to bring more coffee, more cheeseburgers and more cool Minecraft builds. Ugh, the housing market, am I right?

Thankfully, I later saw that some builders from team Harmony Blocks had been working on my dream home. Unfortunately, they’d named it the Castle of Harmony, which doesn’t inspire fear and loyalty in one’s terrified followers. Hmmm. Maybe Castle of Harm Only? I’ll have a think.

After just three days, the building trio working on the Castle of Harmony - UmutUG, Onlyze, and Aetiras - had finished it. Spires, walls, huge body of water and everything. All I need now is to advertise for an ethereal roommate with at least 200 years of previous haunting experience. It even has an atmosphere of otherworldly, Gothic fantasy included with the build! Brilliant.

When I asked the Harmony Blocks team how they came to build this place, they explained how anything can inspire you to create a build in Minecraft. “There are a lot of ways to get inspired,” they say. “You can watch a movie and see something in it, or you might just do some research and suddenly you’re inspired, but eventually you’ll always be inspired by something.”

It’s a truth I think we can all relate to. Like how I’m inspired by autocracy. “We got inspired by a photo we found on the internet,” says Harmony Blocks. “We just found it and brought it to Minecraft.”

Castle of Harmony is reminiscent of both Gothic architecture and fairytale castles. Personally, I really love the colour and shape composition, with the fiery red of the main structure, tall and sharp, standing out against the dull metallic grey of a defensive wall. The castle feels like it could be lifted from a fantasy and planted right into our own world, somewhere in Germany or Austria. The curved towers and turrets, with their cold stone exterior accented by the red above, shares some striking resemblances with those of real castles high in the Austrian mountains.

Harmony Blocks also say that their favourite things to build come from the worlds of medieval and sci-fi. The build absolutely reflects the medieval aspect; it looks positively feudal in design. All it lacks is a coat of arms and the legacy of a king who died horribly after his Queen betrayed him, but I can take care of that. Alas, the creators themselves had no terrible tale of their own behind their construction.

“There is no story to this build,” says Harmony Blocks. “It’s a planned thing. We have special methods, we make a plan, and then we build. The only reason for it is that we love building in Minecraft.”

So what advice would they give to someone who wants to build something similar? “Never give up. Eventually, you’ll do a good job.”

If you want to take a closer look at the Castle of Harmony before sending in your application for the role of my malevolent poltergeist, you can check it out here! Please note that you must have been dead for at least 200 years or have relevant experience in an equivalent field.