This Christmas, create lasting memories while enjoying quality time with your children in the wondrous world of Minecraft.

Sticking with the current D4K theme of activities that dads can do with their kids, few rainy-day ideas top an adventure through the virtual world of Minecraft.

Since Minecraft’s Swedish creator, Markus Persson sold his 71% share to Microsoft in 2014 — after getting fed up with ‘armchair trolls’ — the block construction video game has levelled up higher on the creative options spectrum.

The only limits to what can be built in the “mobs” drenched landscapes and biomes, are imagination and know-how.

This is because, as Persson has stated,

‘Minecraft’ is to a large degree about having unique experiences that nobody else has had. The levels are randomly generated, and you can build anything you want to build yourself.’

With the school term ending and six weeks of summer holidays pending, try out these five Minecraft Christmas survival challenges.

1. Snow biome: Christmas-themed houses, landscape and/or village

• Use red, green, blue, and silver blocks to dress up trees.
• Add lights, carved pumpkins, snow golems, gold blocks and glow berries.
• Throw down some red and white stained glass for candy cane alleys, or sky-rise walkways.
• Use coloured clay and iron chain as ornaments around the spruce houses or on larger-than-life spruce trees.

2. Any Biome: Christmas Treehouse challenge

• Using four saplings planted next to each other in a square, grow the tree of your choice. Then sustainably harvest the loot necessary to build a Christmas-themed treehouse.
• Borrow the same aesthetic ideas from the snow biome challenge.

3. Turn the desert into a Gingerbread Metropolis

• The basic ingredient: stripped oak logs, or coloured clay can be used to make gingerbread-themed houses, roads, market stalls, and villages.
• Keep the rules strictly ginger, with a sprinkle of powdered snow to pull off an authentic look.
• Why not add a gingerbread reindeer?

4. Build a giant snowman

• This isn’t the coolest of ideas (no pun intended), but it is easier, and less time-consuming than the rest. Also, resource-gathering isn’t going to be a grind.
• All you need is snow, a black sheep, some pumpkins and wool dyed red.
• Maybe add a mossy brick fence to keep the “mobs” at bay.

5. Christmas Train

• Perhaps the most challenging of build ideas is creating something akin to the Polar Express.
• Trains are versatile and are often block-shaped. They make for one of the coolest ways to take any Minecraft Christmas challenge from the noob to veteran level.
• A relevant nostalgic nod to the Dickensian, Victorian era and the birth of the modern way we’ve come to celebrate Christmas.

The best thing about these builds is that they are simple ideas.

Additionally, the latest caves and cliffs update for Minecraft makes the Christmas theme more varied, and a lot more achievable.

For example, who wouldn’t utilise glow berries to hang from spruce wood ceilings, or moss to pad the greenery?

These ideas encourage players to share resources and trade for rare items.

The challenges cultivate a competitive but healthy team environment, and give dads (and even mums) a way to not only celebrate Christmas, but celebrate their children, nephews, nieces or foster kids.

The downside to this dad-for-kids idea is that couch co-op split screen now requires a separate account to play.

The upside is that the Windows 10 edition of Minecraft allows for cross-platform play — meaning that Minecraft co-op can be played over a network of gaming consoles, tablets and PCs.

I’m no fan of game developers milking players with in-game currency bought with real dollars. Nor have I been thrilled with game developers killing the classic couch co-operative option.

Still, if you can afford the relatively cheap way to overcome this corporatist obstacle, the return is worth the investment.

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Image by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.