Complete the Monument

Ever tried playing a 'Complete the Monument' map? If you've never heard of Complete the Monument (CTM for short), and are currently about to smash your computer in a bitter confused rage, whoa, whoa, whoa! Calm down, friend! Allow me to explain.

Complete the Monument is a mini-game. Your goal is to survive hostile terrain and enemies while finding objects. Typically you’re seeking out 16 wool blocks but sometimes creators use discs and even optional objectives like gems. Then you use those objects to complete the building of a monument. Simple! But better be quick – in multiplayer, everyone is trying to complete it first!

My favourite CTM maps are cleverly constructed obstacle courses that find sly ways to challenge players during their collect-a-thon. I spoke to renderXR, the builder behind a series of acclaimed CTM maps, the Untold Stories, to find out what goes into making a Monument completion quest to remember.

renderXR sharpened his gaming skills on games like Super Meat Boy, a title known for its incredible difficulty, and The Legend of Zelda, a title known for making it really hard to finish writing this article when I'm still playing it at 5AM.

These weren't his only influences. During his earliest Minecraft experiences, renderXR came across a pretty expansive adventure map called The Four Towers by Wreckage. In it, you had to escape a prison to find your family and friends.

“At the time I was also obsessed with flying islands so I searched around for a flying island survival map, which brought me to Vechs' Infernal Sky map — my first CTM map,” he says. “After completing those maps I started to realise what the possibilities [are] with this game. You can make so many different adventures and challenges with your imagination being the limit.”

On the creative end, one of his first builds was a pyramid with a falling trap. Almost a year later and after playing a few built by others, he tried his hand at creating his own Capture The Monument map. “I made 2 CTM maps that I never released to the public called The Never Ending Caves and the Voyage of Flames,” says renderXR. “To me they felt like the quality wasn't good enough so I decided to scrap them.”

“There are mainly map makers, but there are also some small let's players and streamers,” he says. “With so many mapmakers intermingling, there are frequent map-making events being held. One such event is a game jam for CTM Maps called the Strawberry Jam, where participants make a shorter, three-objective map in 72 hours.

“Seeing people have fun in my creation is really satisfying, because I know I did the job right,” he says. “I start to talk to these people for feedback and make new friends as you share the same passion for these types of maps.”

As renderXR gains more experience and touches more people with his creations, hopefully his passion will continue to grow in the thriving CTM community! And who knows? Maybe one day he’ll even rebuild those two maps he never shared, the true untold stories in his library.