Travelling Town

A town that could simply move out of the way of approaching armies or terrible storms would certainly be helpful to avoid damage to the buildings and people, but it presents some unique challenges in creation. “Building a city is a lot of effort,” Mydelko tells me. “You feel like you’re playing a strategy game, as though you’re the government and responsible for everything. On top of that, it’s a moving city, which gives you the possibility to invent whole new mechanisms for problems that need taking care of.”

Despite the intricacies of his build, Mydelko is a spontaneous worker. “Every time I was inspired I took a sheet of paper and a pencil to start making a kind of outline, but I only managed to make a couple of sketches.”

Instead, he went straight into building. “It was like having ideas pop into my head, and creating them straight away. I’m not the kind of person who wants to spend time on projects and templates, instead I jump right in with a head full of ideas and motivation.”

And this approach clearly worked for him! “I am really proud of lower parts of the city, which were the hardest to build, and the net effect is something that I had stuck in my head before the building started,” he says. Down there are the caterpillar tracks, which are important to get just right as they’re the main mechanic for transporting the city around. “I had to think a lot about the height of the vehicle,” Mydelko explains.

He also likes the details that make it feel like a realistic city; one that people could live in as well as use to travel between places. “I added paths with lamps, small gardens with various crops, even a sewage system!” he says. “Plus, the whole castle that’s placed at the back of the city was a challenge that I think ended up going really well.”

All together, the build is over 500 blocks long, so there’s plenty of real estate for those who would like to move in. And it would certainly be a gorgeous place to live thanks to Mydelko’s steampunk theme.

It’s a theme that he’s used in many of his builds, from another city called Skiphold to a ship and even a giant, mechanical horse. “Steampunk is a genre that is really trendy nowadays, and many artists are starting to focus on it,” he says, telling me that he really likes how much room it gives for experimentation.

“This genre seem to have unlimited potential, because it has dozens of subgenres.” In particular, he likes the fact it can draw from any time period. “It could be the future, could be the past, or even in a parallel universe.”

“Minecraft is really something more than blocks,” he enthuses. He recalls fondly finishing his build: “I realized that my little steampunk car had become a monstrous, gigantic moving city that I once only dreamed of.”

Renders by Paul Sireau, Haru and Kryiie