Museum recreates the Great Fire of London in Minecraft - CNET

London's buing! Or at least it will be, in Minecraft form. The Museum of London is crafting the Great Fire of London in Microsoft's block-based videogame, bolting together an explorable model of the famous conflagration that's designed to educate players.

Three Minecraft maps will be published, with the first due for download from the museum's website on 29 July. That map, playable on PC and Mac, promises explorable landmarks including London Bridge and the old St Paul's Cathedral, plus a treasure hunt for audio extracts that will reveal how the famous fire was spread.

The second map is coming in September, around the 350th aiversary of the blaze itself, which started at a bakery on London's Pudding Lane before rapidly spreading throughout the capital and -- over four days -- consuming the homes of an estimated 70,000 residents. That second map will feature fire-fighting minigames, and a third map is scheduled for February 2017.

Several Minecraft heavyweights have collaborated on the project, including YouTube personalities Adam "Wizard Keen" Clarke and Johan Kruger, aka Dragnoz. The pereially popular Minecraft has been deployed for educational purposes before -- don't miss our special report on how the brick-breaking phenomenon is being used to teach kids subjects including programming, languages and history.