New on Realms: Caves, Crashing and Clockwork

We kick off our return to Realms maps with Capture Kings, a fabulously well-produced take on games like King of the Hill or control point battle arenas. Players select three skills, then jump into the arena. The goal is to control the center point long enough to score a win, but capturing the optional side points is important as well. Maybe you need a bit of a boost or you want your blocks to be harder to remove; just scoot on over to the side while the other team isn’t looking and take it for your own!

As time passes, you’ll earn currency that you can spend on upgrades. Don’t forget to spend your hard-earned coin, or you might find yourself rapidly outclassed by the other team!

The Missing Sandwich II

by ElectroBleach, GenericallyNamed, and Meeepy12

Backtrack is back! Fans of puzzle games might have first caught this game back in 2016, and it makes its Realms debut two years later with 1.13 updates. I found my original review of this map, which said, “Thankfully there are walkthrough videos, because I'm clearly not very good at this style of game!” Based on my most recent playthrough, that still seems to be true.

Backtrack asks you to move forward, and occasionally move back. Placing wool allows you to traverse upwards and onwards, but you’ll soon find yourself running out of blocks to place. It’s at that point that you need to look backward, see where you can optimize, then go collect any wool that you can spare. Clever placement of water, blocks, and pistons is important, lest you find yourself staring confusedly at a wall that’s just ooone block too high. Ah well, there’s always the video walkthrough.

Conveyor Crasher

by Dieuwt

Clockwork is a puzzle map that teaches you a simple gameplay mechanic, then expands upon it until you’ve mastered it. You can jump up on a disappearing and re-appearing block with ease, but the difficulty ramps up when you have to jump between several. There are also ghost blocks, teleporting blocks, and - I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before - blocks that you can swim through! Lovers of jumping puzzles will feel right at home with Clockwork.

Spread 2

by RedstoneJunkies

Returning Favorites

A bunch of mapmakers worked extra hard to get older maps to work in Minecraft 1.13. Some are more recent, but maps like Memory Battle first showed up back in 2015. Now that’s dedication! Click each title below to be whisked away to the first time we wrote about that map.

• Plumber
• Freezun
• Raft Clash
• Simple Checkers
• Rogues
• 3D Minesweeper
• Sky Desert Challenge
• River Rampage
• Makers Spleef
• Color Drop
• Makers Punch
• Bow Blitz
• Cactus Escape
• Advanced Sky
• Don’t Go Insan
• Memory Battle - Released before we even started writing about Realms maps three years ago!

Content comes and goes, and I’m really happy to get into the next generation of Minecraft maps. The content library on Java Realms has always been a passion project, from the creators who submit their levels and art, to the small team that checks each item for playability, fun, and suitability for the platform. Each release, a handful of creators and staff work with the maps, but they’re enjoyed by LOTS of Minecraft players. We hope you’ll enjoy them too.

To learn about loading this and other content into Java Realms for your PC, visit our help site. If you haven't yet tried Realms for yourself, you'll have a blue diamond on the Minecraft Realms button, located on the main screen of Minecraft: Java Edition. Click it, then follow the instructions to try Realms free for 30 days.

Want to have your own Minecraft creations featured on Realms and on this blog? Head over to this page, which explains the Java Realms Content Creator Program. If you’ve got something that uses the new aquatic features, we’re extra interested! If you have questions about this process, you can reach out to me on Twitter.

Happy Minecrafting!