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    An image showing two intrepid explorers ready to discover the Marketplace Fan Favorites from 2017
    Marketplace
    Sophie Austin
    Written By
    Sophie Austin
    Published
    5/25/22

    Marketplace Fan Favorites: Year 1

    Discover the biggest content from Marketplace’s first year

    Buckle up, friend, because we’re going on a journey through time. No, we don’t need a special car, a police box or a mad scientist – just your imagination and some incredible Minecraft Marketplace creators. Throughout the summer we’re celebrating 5 years of Minecraft Marketplace with freebies, discounts and this: our weekly fan favorites round up! We’ll dive into the archives and discover the Marketplace content that set trends and broke records by interviewing the masterminds that created them. Join us to rediscover these all-time favorite maps, get inspired and even take home a gameplay tip or two!

    As this is our first instalment, where better to begin than at the beginning? We’re going all the way back to June 2017. The year coarse dirt and parrots were added into Minecraft. The year that bats stopped swimming underwater (seriously). But most importantly: 2017 was the year that a lovely bunch of intrepid creators decided to put their imagination into adventurous new worlds, skins, texture packs and more and release them on Minecraft Marketplace for the very first time.

    Comic Book Textures

    PureBDCraft by BDCraft 

    If you’ve ever looked at your Overworld and said: I wish this looked like a comic book, then you and BDCraft have something in common. Released in 2017 and updated regularly to include the newest mobs, PureBDCraft by BDCraft is an epic resource pack that makes your Overworld look like a page from a graphic novel. It’s also one of the most popular texture packs of all time on Minecraft Marketplace. When we asked BDCraft why they started making this incredible content, founder Sphax told us:

    I started creating content for Minecraft over a decade ago in 2011, when the full version released. A friend had told me about this new game where you could destroy and build anything, in a completely open and randomly generated world, all in multiplayer! This was a crazy new idea, and we played a lot! My friends and I are a bunch of nerds who love comics, and I realized I wanted Minecraft to feel like you were playing a comic book. I was one of the first creators to be a part of the Marketplace, and PureBDcraft was the very first HD resource pack to launch. Five years later, we’ve recently celebrated a great milestone with the release of our third resource pack, GrungeBDcraft. We are incredibly proud and grateful to have been a part of the Marketplace since it began!

    Sphax

    Mutant Battle Arena

    By Jigarbov Productions

    Jigarbov from Jigarbov Productions also started his map making journey back in 2011, over a decade ago. While some people see a creeper and think, wow, that’s scary enough, Jigarbov saw inspiration. In Mutant Battle Arena, you can face up against a whole host of nightmarish creations, but my favorite is the four-legged creeper. Yes, it’s as scary as it sounds and no I’m not going to tell you if I managed to defeat it or not. You’re just going to have to try it yourself!  

    Mutant Battle Arena by Jigarbov Productions

    When we asked Jigarbov what inspires him, he told us: 

    “Ideas are something that often just come to me when I least expect it. I’ll be playing games or reading and then think, ’Oooh, I would love to see if I can make that in Minecraft.’ The Infinity Skyblock map idea came to me while I was at Disney World. I saw the floating islands of Pandora and it just hit me that it would be cool if I could make a skyblock map that would generate millions of different kinds of skyblocks as you explore."

    "This map, Mutant Battle Arena, is inspired by the many mutant mods before it. I got Jujustyle7 on board who originally designed the mobs as add-ons for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition on PC. Since its release we have updated it a number of times, adding new mutants, updating animations, and including Nether mutants. One little known fact is that this map also includes a story mode. There is a deep hidden lore behind our Battle Arena maps and they’re all connected!”

    Summer Mini-Games Festival

    Play the original festival map from Noxcrew 

    Summer Mini-Games Festival – Play the original festival map from Noxcrew

    Whew. After all that battling I think I need an ice-cream and a game of blocky mini-golf to catch my breath! And where better to find these delights than in the first map of its kind: Summer Mini-Games Festival from Noxcrew! This fun festival map features six mini-games you can play alone or with friends. Head to the beach and test your parkour skills on a challenging obstacle course, or try your hand at Spleef: a game where you mine the blocks beneath your opponent and try and plunge them into a pit before they do the very same to you. Sound like fun? That’s because it is! I could tell you more, but I’m going to hand the reins over to Noxcrew:

    “As a group of gamers ourselves, we’re all people who love creating unique experiences for players. Summer Mini Games Festival was a much-loved release of ours, and players really enjoyed the feel of a festival on the beach. It was the first of its kind, and shortly after, we made maps for all of spring, autumn, and winter, too! An additional fun fact is that the beach it was set on became so iconic that we used it as our base build for the hub in our MC Championship event!”


    Dinosaur Island & City Life

    By PixelHeads 

    Dinosaur Island & City Life by PixelHeads

    From one sandy beach to the next, but this time with an added, teethy twist. From the creators of City Life, PixelHeads saw the Overworld and thought not only does it need dinosaurs, but those dinosaurs should probably have their own tropical island! This immersive, story-driven adventure explores what would happen if scientists brought dinosaurs back to life, and then accidentally lost control of them? Eek! Survive as you find, fight and tame dinosaurs and explore ancient ruins, laboratories, underground caverns, and more!

    Blocks of Inspiration 

    From this week’s creators

    Whew! What a wild ride. Who knew time travel could be so much fun? I promised you inspiring content. Check! Inspiring creators? Check! But we’re not finished yet. Oh no, we also asked our creators if they had any creative tips for you (yes, you!) and it turns out, they did. So whether you want to try your hand at making maps for real or you just want some insider information for your playthrough of Marketplace Creator Tycoon, the free celebratory map from Jigarbov Productions, here’s what they had to say:

    Jigarbov: My advice for aspiring map creators is to just make what you love to play. If you try to cater to a specific audience, especially if you’re not passionate about it, people can tell. At least if it’s something you love, you know you’ll put your heart into it and create a better product than if you didn’t. Plus it will just be way more fun to do so! 

    BDCraft says: “Create things that come from your heart and that you are passionate about.  People can feel when you put all of your heart and soul into your creation! Sometimes it might feel like you want to give up, but don’t. Always keep trying and pushing yourself to new heights.

    Noxcrew agrees. “Just start making something! It’s completely natural to run into hundreds of problems to solve when you’re trying to achieve your vision, but don’t let that slow you down, because if you’re not trying to solve problems, then you’re simply not creating! 

    I could sign off this post by reminding you to check out the Marketplace content highlighted throughout the Marketplace 5 Year Celebration, or to grab your free map from Jigarbov. Instead I’ll leave you with this nugget of a joke from BDCraft: Why can't the Ender Dragon read a book?  Because it always starts at the end…

    See you next week for more fan favorites, friends!

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