LET’S PLAY: RUN SWIM FLY PARKOUR

Do you enjoy running, swimming, and flying, but hate Minecraft? Er, OK. Well, we’re sorry that you ended up on this website – you must be SO unhappy right now – but the good news is that today we’re showcasing a map that might make you finally stop hating on our lil mining n’ crafting game! It’s Run Swim Fly Parkour by Noxcrew on Minecraft Marketplace.

This has all the runny-swimmy-flying fun promised by its title, along with high-jumping, trident-boosting, and face-first flopping when we inevitably mess up a jump. All of it's set in bright green biomes, explosive minecart tracks, jabby stalactite-filled caves, and pretty purple crystal caverns that distract our oohing and ahhing eyes so we run into a wall again. It’s an essential purchase for any Minecraft parkour fan!

But good grief is parkour good at getting your blood pressure up. The giddy highs of nailing these parkour courses are thrilling as Minecraft gets. Good thing too, because the crushing lows of missing a platform yet again and having to redo a section is the kind of repeated punishment that’s even more miserable than, say, marrying a warden (look, they own their own deep dark real estate, OK? Sure, we’re not in love, but they’re stable).

Some maps like to ease you in. Run Swim Fly Parkour prefers to scream START and then never let up. Each course you finish leads straight into the next one. It would be like if olympic athletes had to run all their races in a row. Yes, we just compared playing Minecraft to being an olympian. What of it? Play a bit of this one and see how hyperbolic you’re feeling after, chum.

What makes the initial learning curve so steep is that, even if you’re a vanilla Minecraft parkour veteran, you’re about to get a tremendous and tricky-to-handle speed boost. Tiles with yellow arrows on the floor will give you a jolt of scary speed when you step on them. It’s a giddy thrill to watch a game you know so well suddenly moving at 100000000000 mph (approximately).

Those citrusy arrows are far from the only idea. Bouncy jump pads will send you flying upwards, so long as you remember to press jump when you’re on them (surprisingly easy to forget when you’re trying to focus on the next bit of the course). Then there’s the green blocks that send you pinging forward, another huge spike of speed in exchange for crucial control. Mastering all three of these is the secret to getting best times on these courses that wouldn’t embarrass an elderly tortoise.

Here at Minecraft.net, we consider ‘lifting cake to our mouths’ the only true form of exercise, so having to limber up and play Minecraft at 984375397423942 times the speed (again, a rough estimate) makes for a huge but satisfying challenge. It’s helped that the pace of ideas thrown at you is just as fast as the parkour, too.

One moment you’re running through a nice, familiar green biome. The next you’re screaming as you bounce around in a cave full of horrid pointy rocks that don’t seem to like you. Arghhh!

Why, how lovely and not-at-all-ominous :3

Regular checkpoints can be respawned too at any time, helping cut down the frustration. Sometimes a checkpoint will also give you a new tool, like some running shoes (uh oh), elytra wings, or even a trident.

Honestly, we were confused about the trident until we remembered the fine art of trident jumping. Pull back the trident when you’re in water and when you release it, you’ll get a huge elevation boost into the sky. You HAVE to learn how to do this if you ever want to see the end of Run Swim Fly Parkour before your 99th birthday. Trust us.

You’re probably best off hammering the screenshot button and enjoying the look of these courses after you’ve finished sprinting through them, to be honest. Oh, and are you good with heights? You’re going to need to be.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Don’t.

Look.

Down…

There’s no fall damage, right? Well, only one way to find out!

If Noxcrew tried to build these courses in real life, they’d be arrested immediately, which is probably why they haven’t done that. They’re ridiculously dangerous. At one point you have to run over several minecart rails. OK, not the most foot-friendly surface in the world, but not a huge deal, either. Except there are minecarts moving along those rails. Eep.

Oh, that’s not bad enough for you? OK smart aleck, then how about the fact the minecarts contain TNT blocks? And that if you bump into them, nothing bad happens and you win a nice big pile of emeralds. Oh, wait…. I mean, if you bump into them, they explode. Double eep.

Fancy giving this challenge a go? Then run to Minecraft Marketplace and search for ‘Run Swim Fly Parkour’. Or click this lovely line of green text that’ll take you straight to the Marketplace page. Good luck! We’d love to join you, but all this parkour has put us really behind on our cake-scoffing. Bye!