These are 8 of the most creative 'Minecraft' creations ever

It's hard to say what "Atropos" is. It's got buildings, caverns, giant mushrooms, smokestacks – all slotted into the intricate body of a giant turtle. The name comes from one of the three ancient Greek goddesses of fate.

The beauty of this build is in the seamless integration of macro and micro. Here are some screenshots from within the great chelonian.

You can download "Atropos" and find out more about the project here.

"Atropos" isn't the only stunning "Minecraft" uber-megafauna around. This "Redeemer-Class Gunship" is a feat of over-the-top biomimetic design?. Creator Rossky writes, "Building this 2,045,747 blocks project took 43 days with about 2-6 hours of building every day. "

If only we had an alien super-guppy invasion to give us a reason to build one of these in real life.

Most famous Minecraft creations rely on huge scales. It's easy to understand why: more size takes more effort, and is therefore easily impressive. But map builder TheFarlanders took things small for "Captive Minecraft." The map begins only a block wide, and grows as players reach new achievements.

The map also has the best trailer I've seen for any "Minecraft" creation:

"Minecraft" players realized pretty early on that using "redstone" – a type of game block that behaves like electric wire – they can recreate not only structures from the real world but simple electronic devices. It just take an absurd amount of time, planning, and precision.

The most fun examples have some play function when they're finished. Here's a programmable player piano from user Disco_:

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If that floats your boat, Disco_ has also made a "Sonic the Hedgehog" game map.

Amazingly, there have been lots of computers built in "Minecraft." There are enough to merit their own list. (Our colleagues at Business Insider actually did just that.) But the cleverest one yet is from way back in 2011 – a purpose-built machine from creator Hans Lemurson that plays a two-dimensional version of "Minecraft" on an eight-by-eight pixel screen. The game features gravity, collisions, and movable blocks and takes a huge, intricate infrastructure to work.

So we've got a simulated world running on hardware simulated in a more complex version of that world, simulated on your computer. Wrap your noggin around that doozy.

Here's a video of the gameplay:

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And here's a video explaining how it all actually works:

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But that computer can only do one thing. Here's a fully-functional, purpose-agnostic 16-bit computer with a four-kilobyte hard drive. (Translation: this machine can do some real computing, albeit very slowly.)

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An unauthorized but amazing mod called "Pixelmon" blends the gameplay of "Pokémon" and "Minecraft." Hundreds of Pokémon have been built for the game. And, as the above GIF shows, they can actually get stored in pokéballs, emerge, and do their special moves.

This last project is exciting because you can get involved in creating it. Its goal is to recreate Middle Earth in "Minecraft" down to the tiniest detail. Of course, this would be way too much work for one person or even a team. Instead, "build moderators" assign and supervise tasks carried out by fans on their servers. It's basically a big playground with a purpose.

Here's a trailer for the project:

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Inspired to contribute an elven treehouse or two? You can get involved by visiting their website.