Planet Minecraft's "Head into the Clouds" contest, where players were tasked with taking an awesome and beautiful floating island and making it even more awesome and beautiful, has now concluded. Let's take a look at the winners!


The final three were chosen by both the Planet Minecraft judges and the community: after the one-month submission period closed last week, the site calculated the top 50 projects based on votes from the judges and the sitegoers. Then, it was up to the nine judges to grade each of the 50 finalists in three areas: concept & originality, technique & execution, and presentation. In the end, the points were added up by the site, generating the final leaderboard.


Concept/Originality: 69 + Technique/Execution: 76 + Presentation: 74 = Total score: 219

Celestial motifs and lots of pink come together to form the astrologically-inspired island, and temple, of the third-place project, A Lunar Dream—one of the builds we looked at last week. The imagery of stars and planets might be as old as humanity itself, but when you're faced with such beautiful architecture, it's easy to forget that.


Concept/Originality: 79 + Technique/Execution: 79 + Presentation: 76 = Total score: 234

At second place is another one from last week's features. Hearthveil is a picturesque fantasy land of giant statues, massive trees, and there's also a fearsome galleon and a cathedral—the great thing about this one is that, even though each landmark is so different up close, it all still comes together into one, magnificent whole.


Concept/Originality: 84 + Technique/Execution: 79 + Presentation: 76 = Total score: 239

And finally, nabbing first place is Aeternium, the steam-powered clockwork city. It's just amazing. From the snowy, cloudy exterior to the ancient interior, with its machine bees and huge, ornate musical instruments, Aeternium oozes uniqueness from every pore. If Sotha Sil was still alive, he'd move here in a heartbeat.

You can check out every finalist, along with their scores, here—and don't forget that you can download each map from their respective pages! Aeternium, in particular, is definitely worth a closer look.


Final HitC Leaderboard [Planet Minecraft]