Cave Story

I was walking through a field the other day when I fell in a big puddle. My life is a rollercoaster, I'm sure you'd agree.

Thankfully, there are some magnificent things to be found underground - entire kingdoms of wonder and mystery. Tombs! Caves! Treasure?!? There are truly some awe-inspiring things to behold beneath the dry crust of the world!

But sadly, that's usually only true in Minecraft, and very much not the case with the puddle I fell in. And am now trapped deep inside of. It's quite difficult to write this with eyes full of mud, on a laptop made of more mud - but I'll do my best!

Before I was blinded by what is now starting to smell like cowpats, I got to see the incredible world of La Faille by MrBatou. It’s a beautiful lost kingdom set into a deep cave, with light floating through the cracks in the rock above and vegetation growing everywhere. The atmosphere is eerie and enigmatic.

“I just wanted to create a secret cave,” MrBatou tells me. “I like to believe that many places remain to be discovered. This map is a little fantasy. Imagine strolling through a jungle and falling [into this].”

It’s true that there are still things on this Earth we’ve yet to discover. It wasn’t so long ago that, in the deep jungles of Indonesia, scientists uncovered a whole range of new animal species. This was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2006 (ask your dad), so who knows how many more we'll go on to discover?

But still, these are animals. They live in a jungle that we know about. La Faille, on the other hand, has architecture of unknown origin too, making it a mystery of both nature and design. Who built this place? Why did they leave? Looking at it makes me think of all the things that are still yet to be discovered by humans. The stories yet to be told!

This is part of the allure of Minecraft building for MrBatou. “I can do what I want,” he says. “I can do modeling, create stories, [or] places I’d like to visit.” Like most people, he started out playing Minecraft in survival mode, but soon his love of everything about art lured him to the world of Minecraft builds. Today, he’s creating amazing builds like these - and he has quite the catalog of incredible undiscovered worlds over on his PlanetMinecraft page. Seriously, I urge you to go and explore these places.

“I think [my favourite] project is the Crypt of The Dead. It’s also a cave! But here it has a very dark atmosphere,” MrBatou says.

When it came to this project, he wanted to make an abandoned city that seemed lost in time, “a little like the temples of Angkor,” he says. “Before they were very colourful, but today they are grey and dull.” It's not easy making something look deliberately washed out and dull in Minecraft, while still making a build worth looking at!

As such, MrBatou has kept his colour scheme minimal: “The wood has rotted, the colours have tarnished,” he explains. Fellow builder Killerack - who we’ve featured on Minecraft.net recently - helped MrBatou with his colour palette and together they came up with this lovely dreamy vibe.

MrBatou seems to mostly work independently, so I had to ask, in light of his collaboration with Killerack, what he thinks of building in a team. “I work a lot alone,” he admits, “ [but] working with other people is very nice. We always learn new styles, technique, and then it [also] goes faster!”

So, what are you waiting for? If you're not currently drowning in the mud puddle, you've got no excuse - Go and explore already!