Seven spectacular Minecraft creations

Many of us will have been first introduced to Minecraft when Microsoft announced it was paying $2.5bn (£1.5bn) for the company behind the best-selling video game.

But for several years now a dedicated community has been beavering away in the Minecraft universe, painstakingly creating intricate cyberspace marvels.

Here are seven of the best:

Mapmakers WesterosCraft are on a mission to recreate the universe imagined by George RR Martin in the Game of Thrones books and TV series. The aim is to provide a stage for roleplaying within the fantasy world.

A Minecraft gamer who goes by the username ohmganesha built a functioning 16-bit computer in just two weeks. The virtual machine includes 32 bytes of RAM (random-access memory) and 256 bytes of ROM (read-only memory).

Patrix, the edifice's architect, said it took him just a couple of nights to build. He added that he had never been to a cathedral in real life.

Cody Littley's hard drive can store a single kilobyte of data, which may seem unimpressive when compared with everyday discs, until you consider that Mr Littley - a computer science PhD student in Texas - built it piece-by-piece.

The artists behind the Aurora City Project admit it may never be completed, and the detail of their cityscapes give some indication as to why. You can see several screenshots here.

The Danish government's quest to get the entire country mapped on Minecraft was undertaken to help educate children. However, the project was subsequently vandalised, with portions of the landscape blown up using virtual "dynamite".

Minecraft creator Disco's cyber guitar can play 10 basic open chords. You can watch a demo here.