Author: Matthew Sampson

The Zombie Barbecue is one I would frequently point out to passing children. These zombies have culture enough to cook their food before they eat it!

The drowned on the left has a knife and a fork, ready to dig in!

The zombie on the lower right has a bucket of water for fire safety. Gotta be responsible with those campfires!

Some daddy-daughter time while the barbecue cooks. Awwwww!

All variants of zombie are welcome.

The Portal Inspector is also the inspiration and the movie set for Ouch!, a brickfilm I made in collaboration with another presenter at the Dunedin Brick Show. You can watch it here on YouTube.

And finally…The Panda Surprise is the last build of the Caaaaaaves! display. I don’t know if the pandas actually intend any violence, but the Enderman clearly believes they do!

I used some reddish-brown bricks to represent podzol, which is often found in bamboo jungle biomes. BrickLink calls the colour “dark orange” (I had to look it up).

A square Minecraft moon is attached to the top of the tree.

In The Dragon Emerges, I had the idea that the Ender Dragon has been killed and resurrected many times, and in its fury it has found a way into the Overworld to wreak vengeance. The stronghold room itself reflects this: it has been rebuilt with end stone.

Netherite is common enough in this world to be used for display, and above the door hangs the legendary enchanted Dragonslayer bow that brought the Ender Dragon its first death.

Only one player stands in the way of the dragon’s emergence into the Overworld. And she is armed with … a bed.

The Monster Farm is my second favourite build from the display. I love the steady patterning of the light grey bricks.

I was inspired by mob farms in the Minecraft game, which use natural monster spawning mechanics to channel mobs (and their loot) into a central location.

Let me show you how it works.

Monsters spawn in this darkened area at the top. When they fall down the hole, the fall damage reduces them to 1 heart.

The player hits them through this slot at the bottom. The monsters can’t fight back because they can’t see the player. This allows the player to harvest experience points (XP) and other mob drops—in this case, rotten flesh, bones, bows, arrows and gunpowder, all of which have wider uses in the game.

A side view of the cage.

There is some … rivalry going on, perhaps, between zombies and skeletons?

This part of the build is a reference to the things cats like in Minecraft: beds, chests and furnaces.

I love the yellow-and-purple contrast of the cat and the bed. It’s vivid and cheerful and yet it doesn’t take over the build.

My favourite module—The Library! The floor is made from lapis lazuli and purpur. Oak planks, dark oak planks and stone bricks make up the walls and pillars. I love the texture and colour balance of this build, especially after choosing purple and blue for the floor. This module feels warm and inviting, and best of all, it is a library!

The Library is inspired by the enchanting mechanic in Minecraft. Books in all colours, shapes and sizes add power to the enchanting table. You need fifteen bookcases in the game to unlock the highest-level enchantments—the exact number in this build.

An anvil and grindstone allow the librarian to add, combine and remove enchantments from armour, weapons and tools. Those bookcases holding them up must be pretty strong!

Despite its central importance in the Minecraft game, the enchanting table is not easy to acquire in LEGO form. LEGO Minecraft has been running for 10 years with 119 sets … and the enchanting table appears in just one of those, 21131 The Ice Spikes, released in 2017.

An enchanted blade hangs from the wall, awaiting its chosen wielder.

The Sanctum is my third favourite build. I love the texture of the wall and the colours I used, but the structure is quite a bit weaker than The Library and The Monster Farm. I had to repair it at least once during the show to make sure it didn’t collapse.

This entire module is dedicated to brewing potions. There are so many references to Minecraft brewing mechanics in the build—let me take you through them all!

Nether wart, the base ingredient of nearly every potion in the game, grows in a garden bed of soul sand. The garden bed is made from white quartz blocks from the Nether.

Along the top are other key ingredients for brewing—redstone, glowstone and gold. Blazes do not drop their heads (unless you have a mod like More Mob Heads), but this is a reference to blaze powder—the fuel for brewing stands, as well as an ingredient in Potions of Strength.

The apothecary is holding two brewing ingredients: a golden carrot for Potions of Night Vision (and Potions of Invisibility, if corrupted with a fermented spider eye), and a pufferfish for Potions of Water Breathing.

One of the potions I use the most in Minecraft is the Splash Potion of Weakness, the purple potion with the curved handle for throwing. A zombified villager must have the Weakness effect before you can heal them with a golden apple.

The minecart is another reference to Minecraft game logic. Mobs can’t get out of minecarts on their own, which makes them an effective tool for immobilising your patients. They also prevent hostile mobs from despawning even if you go far away.

A Potion of Night Vision (Better Than Carrots™).

The Warden Spawns is the first cave I built, and consequently has first pick of all my dark grey bricks. I ran out in later modules.

The poor bat was just trying to have a snooze. What do you mean, I can’t stretch my wings?

I have a macro lens that attaches to my phone camera. I used it to take some of these shots. I like the way the Warden is clearly visible but only at second glance.

Cave of Slime was honestly just to fill space. Aside from the diamonds I didn’t do much here.

The Fishing Trip is one of my favourite sections of the build. I think it captures a number of simple pleasures—fishing, cooking, swimming, spending time with your people. Never mind the fact that the Overworld’s atmosphere turns piglins into zombies—this family of three is having a great time.

Lava fish do not exist in Minecraft (yet).

Through the Nether portal, there’s another piglin peering through into the Overworld. A lonely life or a fun-filled undeath? Not a choice I’d be keen to make either.

Some people said The Dripstone Hideout was their favourite cave. The majority of the dark beige bricks are from a bulk lot of 2×2 slopes, which made for some interesting techniques as I tried to make them look like stalactites and stalagmites from the dripstone caverns in Minecraft. The axolotl in the middle is the blue variant, which is so rare in the game you have to breed an average of 1200 axolotls to get one (0.083% chance according to the wiki).

The Healing Power of Friendship is the first appearance of a player character. He’s doing well against a zombie rush—two gold axolotls are defending the river from below.

I love the way the over-water/underwater build has turned out. In this module I’ve begun the transition from dark grey to light grey bricks, partly because I was running out of dark grey, but mostly to reflect the change in Minecraft chunks from stone to deepslate as you dig deeper into the world.

A closer shot of The Healing Power of Friendship. This was quite a fragile part of the build, with only three small pillars to hold up the upper levels.

This module is a reference to two aspects of game logic. First is using axolotls as allies against hostile underwater mobs, from which you get the achievement The Healing Power of Friendship. The second is zombie conversion.

Pay attention to that zombie in the water. Now look at the next photo.

I added the rest of the zombie’s body underwater! I’m not sure if anyone at the show was able to pick up on this, as it’s quite far back and didn’t have internal lighting, but I really enjoyed making sure the details above and below were consistent.

For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, zombies transform into Drowned, a swimming zombie variant, after 30 seconds of being submerged beneath the water. That pale green zombie has already converted, and the others will be similarly trapped … if the ferocious axolotls don’t get them first 🙂

Diamonds! is another filler piece, built mainly to support the middle section.

Everything’s right next to the lava. I can imagine any number of ways mining that diamond ore could go wrong.

The brown blocks in the background are granite. It’s the only place I did another type of Overworld stone aside from basic stone or deepslate.

The Notch Apple is a module I enjoyed building, using inspiration from abandoned mineshafts and the possible loot you can find in those spider-infested halls. The player will need to be quick on the draw if he hopes to get an arrow off at Shelob.

Another shot with the macro lens. The sharp focus on the golden apple is magnificent!