A group of Minecraft players have set an ambitious task of recreating the United Kingdom in the video game, including the entirety of London.

The building team, part of the online community Build the Earth, said they have spent the past five years building detailed digital versions of landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, as well as several of London’s boroughs.

The UK team have collectively spent up to 15,000 hours working on the project. Some members have even gone as far as finding planning applications and contacting organisations directly to ensure their models were as accurate as possible.

The group, which began in 2020, said that although the original aim of recreating the entire planet had since been scaled back, the community continues to encourage players to focus on building places that are meaningful to them locally.

Since its test release in 2009, Minecraft has grown in popularity and is now the biggest-selling computer game of all time. The game is set in an “open world”, which allows players to create almost anything imaginable out of blocks.

Video by Eric Anderson