Noxcrew's Grid Runners
This year we have had the privilege of being asked to create a free map for the Minecraft community, in honour of MINECON Earth 2018. We would like to introduce Grid Runners, a mini-game map that’s bright, fun and perfect for all Minecrafters, regardless of age or experience within the game. That’s right, even you can play! Grid Runners embraces everything Minecraft, with challenges based upon some of the most popular elements of the game: mining, crafting, combat and exploring! Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about the map, how to get hold of it, as well as a complete run-through of the challenges.
Minecraft Activities, Merch, and More at Target
Target has amazing Minecraft themed celebrations taking place on September 22nd from 11am-2pm. The event will include a scavenger hunt with exclusive giveaways, as well as fun photo ops and even meet & greets. There’s a huge selection of exclusive Minecraft goodies and the giveaway will include our Grid Runners mini-game map that’s playable on any platform that uses the Bedrock Engine: Windows 10, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android.
As for the meet & greets, four of your favourite Minecraft YouTubers will be dotted around the USA in various Target stores to meet all of you wonderful Minecrafters! Click their lovely faces below to follow them on Twitter where you can find out where they'll be holding their meet & greets. Each of them has a small number of codes for Grid Runners that they’ll be giving away, so be sure to follow them all on social media for a chance to get your hands on the map!
The parties will be taking place in all 1,800 Target stores across the USA; head on over to Target’s Store Events page to find your nearest store that will be hosting the event.
If you’re unfamiliar with MINECON Earth and you’re wondering what all the hype is about, it is an annual event that celebrates everything Minecraft and is hosted online so that everyone in the world can enjoy it! This year, it’s taking place on September 29th. If you’d like to know a little more about the event itself, what it is and what you can expect from the event, check out our article from last month. You can even watch the entire live stream of MINECON Earth 2017!
So… What is Grid Runners?
Grid Runners is a mini-game map that has been created to celebrate MINECON Earth 2018 and will be available for free at Target stores on September 22nd. In the map, you must race through different obstacle courses against the clock (and against your friends) to achieve the best possible time! There are four courses, with each course increasing in length and difficulty. The Iron course has three challenge rooms, Gold has four rooms, Emerald five and finally Diamond, the most complex course, has six challenges. For each of the courses there are two sets of rooms laid out side by side in a long line to form a grid (Grid Runners, get it?!) to allow two teams to play at once.
Each time you complete a course, your course time will be recorded. The map is infinitely re-playable and will keep track of your best scores until you create a new version of the map, meaning that you can keep trying and practising to improve your times. Out in the lobby, each of the courses has scoreboard above it with best times and previous times shown. Take a screenshot in front of your scoreboards and use the hashtag #noxcrew on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to share your best times with us!
The map is great for both singleplayer and multiplayer gameplay so you can play the map alone, or with as many friends as you would like; you can play in a single lane, or split into two teams (yellow & blue) to add a bit of competition! If you’re playing with a group, make sure everyone is ready before you press the Start button! From that moment, everyone will have ten seconds to select a team and then the race will begin.
How To Play Grid Runners
When you first spawn into the hub, you’ll be surrounded by all four courses: Iron, Gold, Emerald and Diamond. To begin with, only the Iron Course will be unlocked but once you’ve played that through for the first time, you’ll unlock the Gold Course, and so on. Once a course has been unlocked, you can play it as many times as you like!
Each challenge room has a simple task to complete, the instructions for which will appear on your screen when you enter the room, e.g. “Dig down!”, “Bake a cake!”. If you need any tools to get the job done, they’ll appear in your inventory as soon as you enter the room and any old tools will be cleared.
Once you complete a challenge room, the doors will open and you can move on to the next room! In addition to the challenge rooms, each course also ends with a final sprint where players must run as fast as they can to the finish line. This can really make or break close matches, so be careful, you don’t want to miss a block and cost yourselves the win!
Once one of the teams has passed the finish line, the winners appear up on the platform alongside their glorious trophy, while the losers teleport down into pigsty to wallow in the dirt. Follow the exit signs to head back to the hub and select a new course!
To make life a little easier for you, we’ve broken each of the courses down room by room to help you on your way to victory. To avoid spoilers, stop scrolling now!
Iron Course Challenges
Dig Down! In the middle of a bustling city, someone had hidden a button at the bottom of a huge pile of dirt and gravel. Typical! Dig down and press the button to open the door.
Shoot ‘Em Up! This Saloon owner won’t let you in until you shoot down all of the minecarts with your bow. The Wild West is a strange place…
Copy the Painting! Channel your inner Bob Ross and copy the abstract painting on the left onto your empty canvas on the right. Instead of paints, you can step on the pressure plates behind you for each of the colours! If you place a block in the wrong place, you can use the shears to remove it and try again.
Gold Course Challenges
Climb the cliff! Set in a canyon, you must parkour across the wooden platforms to reach the top of the cliff. Seems simple enough! Press the button at the top to open the door.
Find the exit! Cities can be big and confusing, but this one isn’t! It’s just small and confusing… No hints here, it’s a maze and you need to find your way to the door. Press the button to open it and head on through.
Defeat the beasts! We move from a city straight into a jungle temple. As you might expect, there are a few little rascals that don’t appreciate your presence here. Kill all of the skeleton and silverfish mobs and the door will magically open!
Deposit the gold! This one’s for all of you mining enthusiasts! The goal is to make a gold block. Use your pickaxe to mine gold ore, use the furnaces (and coal) to smelt it, then once you have enough gold ingots, use the crafting table to make it into a block. Once you deposit your block into the hopper, the door will open.
Emerald Course Challenges
Defeat the beasts! Your first challenge is a spider cave. How lovely. The challenge is simple: defeat all of the spiders and you’ll be free to move on.
Catch the fish! In eight pools of water, there are eight fish. Catch them all using the buckets in your inventory and the door will open for you.
Light the lamps! Use your excellent parkour skills to jump across the city to turn on each of the six lamps.
Find the flowers! Explore the beautiful garden, find the three flowers that we’re looking for and deposit them into the correct hoppers to open the door. Unfortunately all the while you’ll have to fend off a whole lot of zombies.
Bake a cake! Well that’s easier said than done. What kind of cake? Do you have any allergies? Only joking, it’s always the same in Minecraft! Traverse a small town build to find all the individual ingredients it takes to bake a cake (that’s milk, egg, sugar and wheat); craft it using the crafting table, and deposit it in the hopper to open the door.
Diamond Course Challenges
Shoot the targets! Search the cave for supplies and craft yourselves a bow and arrows. Everything you need is in there: sticks, flint, string and feathers. Shoot the minecarts down to open up the door. You can respawn the supplies using the button at the entrance should you run out, but be careful, that’ll spawn more spiders too!
Knock ‘em down! An arena of zombies awaits. Your goal? To knock ‘em down into the hole in the floor! The pressure plates offer very useful snowballs and a slime block contraption to help you achieve your goal.
Mine to the exit! The premise is simple: mine your way to the exit! No clues with this mini maze, but we have given you a pickaxe to make life easier. Once you reach the door, hit the button above to open it.
Defeat the beasts! In an underwater temple, use the tridents to defeat the three guardians hiding within. The door will open automatically.
Climb to the exit! Your expert parkour skills are needed here! Traverse the jungles and obstacles to reach the exit. Press the button to open the door.
Copy the sculpture! In this small factory, there is an abstract sculpture just waiting to be copied! Use the pressure plates behind you to select your blocks and match the sculpture exactly. Use the pickaxe to remove unwanted blocks.