Tutorials/Creating a challenge map

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If you want to create a challenge map, but don't know how, or need some pointers, read through this tutorial.

Planning

If your map is going to be more than a sequential bunch of random puzzles, it is very helpful to plan out your map in advance. Though a plan can range from a simple bullet list to a block-by-block blueprint of the entire world, a good plan should include:

Theme of the map; what it will be about
Type of map
General storyline (if any—used more for story-based adventure maps)
A basic outline of what traps, challenges and dungeons you will put in (what they are and where they will be)
Basic blueprints for any large structures that will be put in the map
Redstone contraptions tested in another world.
Loot and rewards the players will gain along the way

Types of Challenge maps

Before you choose to make a challenge map, you need to choose what type of map you want it to be. Here are some types:

Adventure: A challenge map made for players that go on an adventure in order to accomplish some goal. Most of them have the /gamerule keepInventory to true to make it easier. E.g.: Zombie apocalypse maps.
Parkour: A map that's just made for parkour.
Survival: A survival world that is changed to make survival more difficult, or easy. A good example is the Skyblock map.
Puzzle: A map that's made for puzzles.
Game: A Minecraft mini-game, showcased in the form of a challenge map.
PvP: Maps made for PvP.
Arena: An arena with mobs spawning that you must defeat.
Dropper: A type of map when you need to survive falls in style.
Capture The Flag: A type of PvP, but the goal is to capture the other teams' flag(s)
Minigames: A map designed to have many different and random minigames that players can play.
Role-Play (RP): RP maps are simulation maps that are related to jobs or situations in real life. These maps are best to be played in multiplayer.
Tycoon: Tycoon games is where you have some type of money-making machine, which you can upgrade over time to produce more money. You can use that money to build specific things in your map. For example, If the tycoon is a prison, then you need to save (not actual price) $5,400 to build it. You know when a tycoon is finished when all the land plots are bought, and the map is filled in.

Tips and tricks

Customize the Superflat world type

Changing the Superflat options can make a good Superflat survival world.

Make a spawn area

You could make a spawn pad, a pre-made house, or anything you can think of!

Top tip: You must add spawn jails to prevent players from escaping! (see Tutorials/Spawn jail)

Add Bonuses

Hide some little rewards for the player. Extra surprises make a challenge map exciting and fun. Diamonds or emeralds work well, because it can be a fun way to keep score. If you want a surprise ending for the players to build up to (literally and figuratively), make the maximum bonus count a multiple of 9, only if the prizes are diamonds, gold, lapis, emeralds, or iron (maybe even coal!) to make the necessary block; for others, it may vary.

Beacons give extraordinary powers, so you can add a mystic powers room. Power the beacon so that it produces haste, speed, strength powers etc. You can also add an enchantment table, the experience farm outlet, and some positive splash potion dispensers (maybe add some negatives for the lulz.)

Make obstacles

Add pits, traps, and more to your map to make it more interesting and challenging. Check out the Puzzles and Traps section of this page for more. Note that if you want to build something enormous and complicated, such as a giant slime dispenser of doom, you would probably want to have a lot of redstone and/or MCEdit knowledge.

Add a kick-death

If you want to make a map to frustrate the player, make people who play the map get kicked by a player with an opinional reason. For example, use, "You are banned from this server! Reason: went to illegal point." When the player dies, they are kicked out of the game for 1 minute! However, note that this is very hard to do in vanilla survival, without the /kick command being hacked.

Add a permanent death

Most challenge maps have unlimited tries to solve a puzzle. However, if you make a tripwire that sets a new spawn point for players and the players fail, then they need to re-download the map. In the fail room, add a large game over sign and a message saying:

Unfortunately, you lost all of your tries to complete and you need to re-download the map.

Alternately, you can make a command block that prevents players from moving, as well as a command block saying:

Game over. You must re-download the map.

This adds an extra degree of difficulty to the map. If you want to warn the players so that they can expect to re-download the map, have a command block say this at the beginning:

Warning! If you fail, then it is game over and you need to re-download the map.

Then players will be extra careful, especially in the "test your brain" test!

Make dungeons

Making pre-made dungeons hidden around your map can give players a very fun time! Dungeons can be used especially when a player can go anywhere in a map, rather than on a set course.

Add some fancy stuff

Hack stuff into your inventory. Monster spawners would be useful for some traps or funboxes, or simply decorations. End crystals look very elegant, but due to their obstructive and explosive powers, can be used as sorts of obstacles the player has to safely destroy. (Check out the "Look before you Detonate" trap!)

Make a boss

You can make a boss out of redstone and dispensers. They are a great way to end any map.

Also, you could spawn an ender dragon or a wither in a room. Just remember to use the command /gamerule mobGriefing false, so that the bosses won't be able to destroy blocks. Alternatively, add your own boss. Customize your own boss mob by adding extra data tags (see Tutorials/Command block#1.7 uses). Even better, create custom mods with your own made-up boss! NOTE: To do this, you must be able to use Java programming or data packs (see Tutorials/Creating a data pack).

Other tips

Checkpoints can be created by placing pressure plates, with command blocks underneath them.

You may even want to have secret button. For example, a player gets given a bow and some arrows, and if they shoot a button, a secret door or path appears, leading them to a bonus room. It is ideal, though, to have obstacles in the way of the button, so take this into consideration when making the map.

Bedrock or barriers could encase areas where you do not want the player to escape from, and is a genius idea for spawn jails.

Firework finale

When you finally finish the map, you can create a fireworks show for celebration. Hook up redstone to some dispensers, craft up some fireworks, and then let them fly! Alternatively, you could just add some diamond dispensers. Either way will look amazing, and are great ways to celebrate the completion of a challenge map. If you don't want to use dispensers, use command blocks to spawn fireworks.

Texture Packs

Texture packs is a great way of making your world different. It makes it unique, and fun. If you want to make your own texture packs, then the people playing your map will really love it more!

Puzzles and Traps

Ideas

Basic parkour

Parkour over lava pit with chest — A parkour room, containing floating blocks over a pit of lava, that the player is expected to jump across, and a chest at the end as a reward.

Make a large room and put lots of lava at the bottom. Then, place down blocks over the lava, on which the player has to jump from one to another. Make a small alcove at the top with a chest in it, which is where the player must get to.

Any blocks sitting next to the wall can be controlled with sticky pistons to extend and then go back into the wall, to time jumps.

"Tightropes" can be made by putting strings of glass panes or iron bars.

The Cakes Are A Lie

Place 5 cakes in a line over BUD switches for the player to eat. One of the cakes, when eaten, will push up a small chest area with valuable stuff. The remaining 4 will send the player into a very deep lava pit! If you want, you can have a riddle written out on signs, and have the correct answer on the correct cake. (BTW the title is a reference to Portal)

That Hurt!

Create a tripwire hooked to an arrow dispenser that one tripwire hook is on. The victim will start running, and then get pushed down a hole, causing fall/lava and arrow damage.

This trap is avoidable. If the victim runs fast enough and/or realizes, then the victim avoids the trap, but if you put a furnace facing in, the player might think that the dispenser is just an ornate tripwire dropping a prize.

What Tiles?

Create a room with a grid of wooden and stone pressure plates. Only some plates are safe to the player. For example, wood pressure plates are safe to walk on while stone ones push the player into the Void. This can be achieved by using command blocks to teleport the poor helpless victims to y=-64, or just by setting the command block to perform the command kill

Fire Maze — A similar netherrack and fire maze as the one described in the text to the left.

Be Flamin' Careful

Create a maze with netherrack sides at ground level. Set the netherrack on fire. Players will find it hard to complete this maze without a scald. To stop them jumping over the flames put some floating obsidian, bedrock, or end portal frame blocks, two blocks above the maze path. To make it more challenging for the player, make it a maze that climbs upwards and then add a lever saying "Trophy," which when pulled will create a lava flow that chases the player, who has to either burn in lava or burn in fire.

Be smart...

Put a hard question to solve with 3 answers. To do so, put 3 levers and 3 signs with answers. The correct answer will open a path for the player to pass. Others will throw lava into the room. Take advantage of the fact that dispensers with buckets can place lava, and then suck it back up. Or, if you wish for a fancier way to kill your hapless victims, you can always use command blocks to do cruel stuff, such as striking a player with a lightning bolt, or blow the player up with instantly detonating TNT. Here's the command:

/execute @p ~ ~ ~ summon tnt ~ ~ ~ {ExplosionPower:-10,Fuse:0.5s}

It's in my way!!!

In a very long corridor/mine, put a block at head height and place a redstone torch on it. Connect it to a sticky piston just below a huge tower of gravel! When the player breaks the torch block, the piston will retract and the gravel will fall down! Alternatively, make a double NOT gate (see Tutorials/Basic logic gates)leading to a command block that teleports the player to a Funbox room! However, this can be bypassed with ender pearls, but you can solve this problem by putting bedrock on the bottom.

It's just H2O!

Make a path that goes slightly underground, then fill it to the ceiling with water. Add some air pockets so your players can breathe, using signs or open trapdoors. Spawn some squid to annoy players even more. In third party mods, you could make the squids hostile and make them shoot ink to damage and blind the players. Or you could go for a similar effect in vanilla Minecraft and have some command blocks that cause Blindness every time the player touches a squid. In addition, you could use pufferfish guardians, to deal damage, or maybe, even, a room with an elder guardian.

"Bedrock!"

Make a BUD switch next to a bed that detects when a player is in that bed. Hook it up to a command block that teleports the player to a bedrock room that you made!

Creepers

Creepers are nice for dealing with your challenge map victims but can blow up parts of your structure, so try building the creeper room out of obsidian and add some inaccessible charged creeper spawners. Alternatively you can use /gamerule mobGriefing false to make it so that creepers, endermen, zombies, ghasts, withers, and ender dragons can't damage the environment.

Also, you might want to drop the player into a pit full of creepers. One of the nice things about this is the pit gets bigger as the creepers blow up. Give them a cheap tool such as an iron pickaxe, to kill the creepers with, and add some small elevations or safe spots, or a complex redstone device that can make them invisible. You could also add a disabled "creeper generator" that adds in creepers, and the player has to break it to stay alive.

Look Before You Detonate

Because of the fact that end crystals explode when broken, you can use these for your advantage when making traps on your custom map.

Put some lines of TNT underground, 1 block under the floor. Line these up to a central end crystal obstructing the player's way. A simple lesson: look before you detonate something.

Sand Falls...

Tripwire is a very good tool and plays a role in this trap. Place a tripwire, then wire it up to a set of pistons. Make sure that the tripwire hook is in a place where it's impossible or very difficult for the player to see it.When the player comes along, they will not see the tripwire, so they will trip over the wire, and stumble into a pit that you made beneath the pistons. Make it fall into a ravine, a room with plenty mob spawners, or, if you are really mean, an end portal.

Run Fast

This trap takes advantage of the very fast speed you can achieve by sprint-jumping in a two-block high passageway. First of all, build a two-block tall passageway of whatever length you want. Put a pressure plate at the beginning of the hallway, and connect it to pistons that will retract the floor. Put in a delay, so that the floor will retract just after a sprint-jumping player gets through. If they aren't fast enough...

Test Your Brain

Put numbers along the game that players have to remember, then add a room to enter these numbers. If they get it right, they can move along. If not, they would fall into a deadly trap, such as lava, cactus, or the void. It is probably a good idea to prevent the players from going back to these numbers somehow, for example, using pistons to create a door that locks behind the players.

If in multiplayer, a good idea is to have one player could be in the number room, and one could be in the question room. The one in the number room can tell the person in the question room the answer, and then the one in the number room is stuck but he can use the tp command to teleport to the one in the question room and carry on (this will only work if cheats are on).

Door Explore

Make piston doors with multiple keys. One idea is to make an End Portal Frame with a redstone comparator next to it, that must be activated with a hidden eye of ender. Another option is to make a combination lock. You could also make one where the player must rename a stick to the correct name (hidden on a secret sign!) and put it in a hopper chest, powering a comparator for the door.

There! Oh, no, never mind.

Make something like Indiana Jones-ing. Put attractive blocks such as diamond/gold stuck to a wall. When the player touches it -pressure plate/tripwire etc. etc.- the block would come to the other side and the player would fall into something dangerous of your choice, such as lava, the void, or the End.

Indiana Jones-ing... again...

Now that dispensers can face upwards as of very recent updates, fill them with arrows and put a pressure plate or tripwire on top for an instant semi-hidden trap.

Indiana Jones-ing... a third time...

Put attractive blocks such as diamond/gold on a pedestal. 13 blocks below, place a piston that fires every so often (1 second is good.) Because pistons can push a maximum of 12 blocks, nothing will happen until the player takes the block, because the piston will extend if they don't put another block (like sand) in its place. Connect the piston to a BUD switch to activate some traps and hope the players remember to grab their hat!

Falling Floors

To make your level exciting, arrange a floor of TNT, with gravel on top. Then add a pressure plate on the gravel, so when you step on it, it disintegrates. Make some parts of the floor not fall (replace TNT with any other block), or a fail would render the level unplayable.

Button Brain Mash

Use buttons, or possibly comparatored item frames, for a simple combination lock.

Minecart Mania

Make a huge underground minecart roller coaster and give them a bow. Add some hard to shoot wood buttons. The aim is to shoot all the buttons and get them all to activate, turning on an And gate that changes the track to the next room.

The danger chests

First, fill the first trapped chest with useful loot and then place a block underneath the chest and then TNT. Then place a second trapped chest 2 blocks away from the first chest and place a block then a dispenser with flint and steel and then minecart with TNT underneath. Then place a regular chest 2 blocks away from the chest. Then fill it with useful loot. Add signs next to the chests like: Armor/food/swords/reward inside!

Here's a side view:

The ender puzzle

The End can be tough due to the dragon and endermen. If you want to make a course, then direct it the finish portal and add a huge reward at the end. Add something that really helps them in the game like the Strength V, full diamond enchanted armor, a stack of enchanted golden apples, Resistance II, an enchanted bow with arrows, to buy stuff they get 5 stacks of the stuff they need to use to buy and an extra reward for players, they get to keep their inventory! Kill the dragon first or you get spammed.

Invisibility Cloak

Make a long room (made of bedrock or obsidian) filled with creepers. In the beginning, make a chest with a 3:00 minute Invisibility potion. The player must reach the exit in time, or have all the creepers explode on the player.

Cake Shaft

Give a few really strong hunger potions to each player. Make a huge vertical shaft of cake. The aim is that the players must drink potion and eat the cake to go down to the next brain teaser. Optionally, to make this into a challenge, add lava coming down on them so they have to eat the cake quick!

Splitup path

This divides your players into smaller groups and make 2 doorways and place iron doors at the front. Then place pressure plates next to them. Make a different route from each other. Make sure all of them direct to the same finish line. Alternatively, you could make it that only one of the paths win, and the other players will be turned into some fresh cooked meat by some lava. The surviving player is the "winner".

RUUUUUNNN!

This is similar to the other one except add some curves to make it trickier and holes and blocks that crush you. Make a command block that affects you with speed III. Otherwise this puzzle will be unwinnable.

Fake trap

Put pressure plates around a diamond block or chest, or make it look like there's redstone coming from a trapped chest. The player may think this is a trap, and may decide to quit the map.

Chain reaction

You can wire up your traps with some rube goldberg wiring. As well as looking cool, some of these things can be deadly. Take Greenstone as an example; you could stack a lot of sand on the sand, and when it falls, the player will fall through it and when it lands, they won't be able to breathe anymore. Get as creative as possible.

Funbox

Funboxes are 3x3x3 spawners that are very hard to disable.

Types of funboxes

Deathdome: Use MCedit or commands to make primed TNT spawners. Set them to 1 tick minimum and 20 ticks maximum. Set to 8 ticks as current time. Add a spawning range. Don't forget to cover the room with obsidian including the spawners or weep! When the players enter the room, hundreds of TNT will explode right into their faces! Add diamond armor for them.

Don't look: Add endermen spawners. Make the room out of bedrock. When the players look at the endermen, they will attack them! Don't say I didn't warn you!

Monster maker: Add random hostile mob spawners. Then it will be chaos!

Meat room: If you are feeling nice, then add a reward with a funbox of pig spawners so players can kill them for food? Add fire aspect swords or a furnace with a chest of coal. If you don't want players killing pigs, then add a cooked pork funbox.

Potion funbox: Make a funbox out of positive potion spawners (add negatives for the lulz.). Also, put it in an enchanting room!

Buried alive: Make a funbox out of falling sand or gravel spawners. (Add the rare anvil.) Fill the large room with sand. Give the players some stone shovels. Add blockades to the room. Set the spawning cooldown to 4 ticks minimum to 5 ticks maximum. Set the current spawning cooldown time to 4 ticks. When players dig up the sand, the room will rapidly start to fill up with sand and then they will die! Give them one torch each to remove some of the gravel.

That hurt!: Make an arrow spawner. This is better than the dispenser one since it has unlimited ammo. Add leather armor for them.

The sudden ultimate death "Peaceful" map

Make a detector that detects players that switched to peaceful, then create a command block that teleports them to another room. Make a sign saying:

You have switched to peaceful and therefore you must complete this "peaceful" map to continue.

Make a command block that clears their items from their inventory. Make a new spawnpoint for the unlucky player in a bedrock room with no way out. Make a map that is near impossible to complete. (E.g. Parkour map.) Add a few small rewards for the player to progress. Make the level really long with no checkpoints. When the player reaches the end, make a hidden button teleporting to the end of the adventure map in a good way. (WARNING: Contains spoilers) In the bedrock room, make a sign saying:

GAME OVER. You have failed the sudden death challenge on this map and you need to re-download the map.

You could also take the post down after a certain amount of views is reached, so they'll never be able to download it again, allowing for bigger consequences if they fail the map.

The Test Series

Create a series of challenges, where if you fail, you get teleported to the next test. But, if you win, you get a reward like armor and a sword. After a certain amount of tests have them go to the End and fight the ender dragon with their current equipment. This is a...

Bullethell

Use command blocks to shoot projectiles such as arrows and fireballs at the player, or even spawn entire blocks of lava that the player needs to dodge. Custom death messages are optional but can be added.

Elytra Crawlspace

Create an upside-down slab tunnel which is only accessible by using elytra. Fill it with spiders or silverfish to add some enemies to fight. (deprecated: as of 1.13, you can swim through, and as of 1.14, you can crawl through.)

Some redstone tips

Powering unpowered redstone that's next to floating sand, gravel, water, or lava, will cause it to irreversibly obey physics.
For a really nice map, having a large amount of command blocks can be good, but not always. Sometimes 1 well thought out command can be better than 10 useless commands.