The Five Best Minecraft Adventure Maps

Minecraft has exploded in popularity in recent years, and so has the number of adventure maps available, making it kind of hard to figure out where to start if you’re looking for something fun and interesting that’s not the same old survival mode Minecraft experience.

From deep and involving puzzles, to hardcore combat simulators, to terrifying horror experiences, adventure maps have come a long way since the adventure update in 2011, but there are a few that stand out and just as awesome now as they were when they launched. Here are five classic Minecraft adventure maps that are fun, unique, and will keep you busy for a very long time:

5. The Redmurk Mystery

One of the oldest adventure maps around, this is still, to many players, one of the best ever made, even though it was created before some of the new tools for adventure map making were introduced (like command blocks). Creepy, atmospheric, and deep, this is a fantastic horror/mystery in the vein of Resident Evil or Amnesia that will suck you in and keep you on the edge of your seat for hours.

Explore a massive, beautiful mansion, unravel an ominous mystery, and try not to die. If you’re competitive, you can even collect diamonds along the way to mark your progress and compare your run to other Minecraft players

4. Zelda Adventure

This map is a faithful and loving recreation of the world of Hyrule in Minecraft. What’s neat about Zelda Adventure is that is it makes great use of the AdventureCraft mod, which adds NPCs, cutscenes, new monsters, traps, and all kind of other cool stuff that regular Minecraft doesn’t make it easy to work with.

Even if you aren’t a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda (but honestly, who isn’t?), this is a fun and challenging adventure map with lots of neat dungeons, tough fights, and cool new weapons and enemies.

3. Deep Space Turtle Chase

Another classic -but unbeatable- map, Deep Space Turtle Chase puts you in the shoes of Professor Tagonist (get it?) and tasks you with hunting down a wanted criminal — IN SPAAAAACE. Along the way you’ll go through crazy action sequences, solve brain-twisting puzzles, perform maddening feats of engineering, and have a grand old time.

This is a true masterpiece of Minecraft engineering — it’s well designed, obsessively detailed, and lovingly crafted. This is a great example of what an adventure map can be and it’s fun to boot.

2. The Tourist

This is another genuinely unique map, and one that is going to be hard to beat for a long time to come. You spawn in a meticulously re-created Paris, eerily alone, and have to solve the mystery of where the heck everyone has gone to (and get something to eat). 

The map takes you through notable Parisian locations like the Sacré-Cœur and the Catacombs, and contains some of the most challenging and rewarding puzzles of any adventure map to date. It’s really hard to beat the attention to detail and dedication that went in to The Tourist.

1. Herobrine’s Mansion

Finally, the adventure map to end all adventure maps, Herobrine’s Mansion has it all — jumping puzzles, redstone logic challenges, speed tests, riddles, word games, and more, all set in a really cool and intricate build. This is the ultimate in single-player adventuring, and if you’re looking to eat up a day or more solving a really deep and interesting mystery, you cannot do better than Herobrine’s Mansion.

This adventure really sets the bar for how good adventure maps can be. While there are many imitators, Herobrine’s Mansion is the best at what it does. Plus, if one map doesn’t sate your appetite for mind-bending puzzles and mystery solving, there are two more maps in the series to keep you occupied.