'Can you find your house?' TikToker builds Punggol estate in Minecraft, charms netizens

If you live in Punggol, your home might have been featured in this TikToker's Minecraft creation.

TikTok user CodestianBuilds uploaded footage of Punggol HDB estate replicated in Minecraft in a viral video that has garnered over 110,900 views and more than 9,900 likes since Saturday (Aug 12).

In the video, many buildings in Punggol were faithfully recreated, such as Oasis Primary School, Punggol MRT/LRT stations, Waterway Point as well as residential areas like Punggol Grove, Punggol Vista and Punggol Breeze.

"Punggol town is building up in Minecraft!" CodestianBuilds, 23, wrote on his TikTok post. "Can you find your house?"

@codestianbuilds Punggol Town is building up in Minecraft! 🏗️ Can you find your house? #Minecraft #singapore #fypsingapore #buildtheearth #buildtheearthasean #urbanplanning #punggol #fyp #architecture #hdb #ura #btohdb #waterway #Punggol #school #worldedit ♬ Seven (feat. Latto) - Clean Ver. - Jung Kook & Latto

But this isn't his first rodeo when it comes to building things in Minecraft, an open-world adventure and sandbox game by Mojang Studios.

As part of the Build The Earth project in Minecraft aimed at building the world on a 1:1 scale, he first documented his feats of construction towards the end of July, where he uploaded footage of his creations on TikTok as well.

At the time, CodestianBuilds, an information and communications technology student at the Singapore Institute of Technology, had already built Punggol Regalia, Oasis Primary School and Cove LRT station.

While Minecraft may not be the most complex of games to play, there was certainly difficulty in creating these imitations of real life architecture in a video game.

CodestianBuilds shared in a video uploaded on July 29 that his project will span an area of over 6 million blocks in Minecraft, of which a single block is used to represent one metre in reality.

@codestianbuilds The project spans over an area of 6 million blocks in Minecraft. Built in BuildTheEarth ASEAN. #Minecraft #singapore #fypsingapore #buildtheearth #urbanplanning #construction #buildtheearthasean #punggol #fyp #scalemodel #renderdistance ♬ We Will Rock You - Remastered 2011 - Queen

Netizens were amazed by the detail that he put into this project, with one user even asking: "If I go to my own house [in-game], will I see myself?"

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Exclaimed another: "Wow! My house is there!"

Many other users had their own requests of CodestianBuilds, asking him to make various landmarks in Punggol, ranging from Waterway Primary School to Punggol Ripples.

"Do you plan on building the entirety of Singapore?" A user also asked incredulously.

In response, user Sup13Builds — who's in charge of building Malaysia as part of Build The Earth — deadpanned: "The project itself is about rebuilding the entire earth."

CodestianBuilds shared in the comments section of his video that he intends to make "every single building in the Punggol planning area" in accordance to the Urban Redevelopment Authority's Master Plan.

He also added: "Sengkang is next but will take a long time."

He told AsiaOne that he has been working on recreating Punggol since May, adding that it's easier to build and that the estate is also the site of his university's new campus.

He said that he's looking at working on other estates including Sengkang and the Dawson Road area.

He also told AsiaOne that his participation in Build The Earth is purely based on passion as he's not compensated at all, although interested parties can donate to him via Ko-fi, a platform used by creators to streamline donations.

He's also doing this to let people view their neighbourhoods and schools, as well as to create a 3D model that "can potentially be used outside of the game for a wide variety of use cases".

"Even though my main field of study is IT, I have an interest in architecture and urban planning," he also said.

"By building HDBs, MRT stations, malls and schools in Minecraft, I can understand the reasoning behind such designs and to a certain extent the history of the buildings, such as Matilda House and Punggol LRT station."

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khooyihang@asiaone.com

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