Minecraft Is an Infinite Sandbox That’s Being Beaten in Minutes

Players who try to beat the sandbox game Minecraft can spend months or even years on the task. They must embark on an arduous journey to a lava-swamped region called the Nether and then excavatedeep underground to find a dungeon known as a Stronghold. After creating a portal to the abyssal world the End, they battle a flying dragon that shoots fireballs in between its poisonous breath attacks.

In January, a player did all of that in less than a minute.

The whirlwind game by the YouTuber known as HanabiYaki, who beat an optimally set-up world in 53 seconds, was the latest in a series of unbelievably fast, history-making runs. The same month, a player known as drip120 broke the record in the game’s most popular category, conquering a randomly generated world without using any glitches in a blistering 7 minutes 1 second.

Many fans of Minecraft, which debuted in a beta version 15 years ago this week, enjoy the casual thrill of mining for rare resources and building fantastical houses. Given its infinite-exploration playability, it is one of the last games you would expect to have a robust speedrunning community.

But Minecraft’s competitive scene is one of the industry’s most feverish, helping to keep interest in the game robust as titles like Roblox and Fortnite have surpassed it in monthly users. A fresh generation of players is trying to beat and break Minecraft with deliriously creative and cunning strategies.

Similar to running in real life, speedrunning involves extensive periods of solitude and painstaking labor. There is often no objective beyond beating a personal best.