Sebastian Sobr-Sosnowski, 17, has been hard at work recreating his hometown on the popular game Minecraft, as part of the Build the Earth (BTE) project.
BTE aims to recreate the whole Earth in Minecraft on a 1:1 scale and has about 160,000 members building various towns, cities and countries across the globe.
His feat has made Kaitāia the very first urban area to be fully completed on the server.
A Kaitāia teen has completed the town on Minecraft as part of the Build the Earth project.
“It’s a great feeling knowing that Kaitāia is the very first urban area to be fully completed on the server, as this means Kaitāia will forever be the town that was made first and that fact can never be taken away from us. It also gives our town something that no other town or city in New Zealand has right now, which I think is hilarious and awesome.”
He said he had mixed emotions upon completing his Kaitāia project but was mostly overjoyed that it was successful and his many hours on the server were not wasted.
Kaitāia is the very first urban area to be fully completed on the server.
“I wanted to make Kaitāia in Minecraft form for years and think it’s amazing my dream has come true. I am also in a state of shock, I’m still processing the fact that Kaitāia has been completed and I’m still finding it hard to believe that it is fully made in Minecraft. For a long time I was unsure if it would actually get done, especially in the early days.”
Sobr-Sosnowski began on September 16, 2022, and finished in the early hours of Monday morning and remains involved in BTE. He now plans on doing the areas around Kaitāia and beyond.
“I have gotten many requests from people to do the nearby towns of Ahipara and Awanui, so I will absolutely get started on that. Someone from Taupō is also paying me a couple hundred dollars to make a large chunk of Taupō in January, so will 100% do Taupō.
The Minecraft version of Commerce St in Kaitāia.
“Right now, I am kind of bouncing around building in random locations, I just applied for builder in the Ireland team and am doing some work in BTE Africa doing Egypt and BTE Ukraine building the city of Mariupol. This is because I want to dip my toes in some random areas before committing to the next big project of Awanui/Ahipara and Taupō.”
Yolisa Tswanya is deputy news director at the Northern Advocate, based in Whangārei.
