New on Java Realms: Potato Games and Animated Frames

Each Realms map release, we bring you some of the finest map experiences that our community has to offer. It’s usually a healthy mix of fast-paced minigames, and longer, slower adventuring maps. Standard fare, good-old fashioned Minecraft. But this week, four of the seven new maps are the fancy Inspiration or Experience type maps. If these words mean nothing to you, I’ll explain. A wise man once wrote, in the Realms mapmaker guidelines, that “Inspiration maps are generally designed to encourage and inspire players to create or design new things in Minecraft”, while “Experiences are a category of loosely-defined maps mostly without a specific intended goal, where the player's purpose might be to explore, experience, or observe.” Now you know what we know.

But if you’re the type of person who finds themselves easily bored with content descriptions pulled straight from our creator documentation (and let’s face it, who isn’t) then rest easy knowing that we also have some minigames in store for you. Now, onwards to wildly entertaining descriptions of the maps!

Winter Haven Holiday Resort

by Tumblrr, Enlighten, chunswae

Here to cruelly remind us that winter is just around the corner, and that we have months of cold and darkness to look forward to, it’s Winter Haven Holiday Resort! This map seems great, because it’s a resort, full of cozy... er, my notes are telling me that the entire town is empty, something terrible has happened, and people are turning into mermaids. So, not cozy.

Ah well. Winter Haven features cool features like ski lifts and hockey arenas, both perfect for your now-solo winter experience. Figure out what’s happened to everyone, or just enjoy not having to stand in any lines.

Biome Run 2

by Supersette, Chumbleweasel, PurpleCrystal02

Rarely does a map come along whose title is so descriptive, but so succinct, that it captures the entire essence of its creation in two-ish words. In Biome Run 2, you run through biomes. If you run really well, you win. Some of these biomes are a bit puzzling, and the varied builds will give you lots to puzzle over. Tired of just hopping from block to block in the sky? Try hopping between ships in a water level! Mast, to plank, to island, 360 spin onto another ship, into the water. Hardcore!

Alpine Falls

by Celisio, b3nj1, zun

Rest and relaxation are the key to this Inspiration map. Take a stroll through the quiet cabins or do a lap around the lake. Do you feel inspired? No? Alright, head back out and check out the majestic waterfall, or that fun game of volleyball. Are you inspired now? For the purposes of this summary, I’m hearing you say ‘yes’! Your goal here is just to take it all in, then when you’re ready, head into your own world and try building these creations yourself. Impress your friends and go from dirt house to wooden house in no time flat!

Biome Builds

by Theticman, ChildOfStars

Another Inspiration map! What did we do to deserve such a treat this week? Here we have different sets of builds that show off what players might build in the various Minecraft biomes using materials that generate in those areas. This is perfect for the kind of player who either wants to seamlessly blend materials and terrain, or who is afraid for their digital life and never wants to leave their home area for fear of running into a wandering patrol and getting crossbowed to death again.

The creators of these builds have left you some fancy tools and features, such as being able to easily set the world to different times to see how the builds look, or letting you zip into each biome directly by clicking on a list. Our team’s favorite feature: go check out the amazing rotating windmill. Confused about how they did it? Set yourself to spectator mode. Still confused about how they did it? It’s down the YouTube build tutorials rabbit hole for you!

Build Animator

by MHF_Trader, Games_or_Whatevr

Every so often, a map makes us stop, think, and make puzzled villager sounds. The creators of Build Animator have put together something that we think is super interesting: a way to create and animate frames in Minecraft! You’ve got a total of twenty frames available in which to build your structures. You can use tools to copy and edit previous frames and select different speeds at which to play your animation. Finally, I can easily live my dream of leaving working with Minecraft to become a famous animator… in Minecraft!

Castle Chaos

By The Yeggs Team

As is tradition in many video games, two bases in the middle of nowhere sit opposite one another. If you were to take over the enemy base, then you’d own two bases in the middle of nowhere! Regardless of your motivation, you should grab a team and try your hand at Castle Chaos, the newest control point style minigame to drop into Realms.  

Capture towers while making your way through floating islands, and secure your victory by taking all four of the enemy towers. There’s some fun kit customization that you can do for each game, but for me, the coolest feature here is that you can customize the map with different pre-game options, allowing you to determine which paths are blocked or accessible. Now I want this in all the games that I play!

Potato Games: Remastered

By Donisi

Hot potato facts: Potatoes are 80% water. Fact. You can survive off of eating just potatoes and probably also some multivitamins. Fact. Ancient villagers used this miracle crop as a form of currency before the illagers got hungry and baked them all. Possible fact.

Confirmed fact number four is that Potato Games: Remastered is now available on Realms! Perfect for a raucous Friday night with your chums, these tuber trials are a collection of sixteen minigames in varying lengths and laughs. Parkour around falling buildings, splatter the landscape in paint, or compete in the arena with potato royale. Do these, and thirteen other fantastic activities, and you may or may not become an expert in everyone’s favorite spud.

Don’t walk- fun!

By this point in the article, you should be brimming with excitement and rearing to go try some of the swaggest new content on Realms. Minigames, camp, animation, and more! If so, I give you permission to skip the following two boilerplate paragraphs and dash off straight to your computing device. I am, of course, paid by the number of words that you read, but I’ll take the hit for you this one time.

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 have questions about this process, you can find me on Twitter.

Happy Minecrafting!