Project Elek is a story-driven horror map for Minecraft Java Edition by Wickedturtle17, playable alone or with up to four people. You investigate disappearances around a forest until the case turns on you, working through chapters with limited supplies and a shop between encounters.
Project Elek casts you as an investigator working missing-persons cases for a small-town police department, and it does not leave you in that role for long. Two years of disappearances have been traced back to one stretch of forest. You have been close to the search the whole time. Then one evening you see it happen in front of you, and whoever is responsible decides you are worth taking as well.
Wickedturtle17 built it for Minecraft Java Edition, and it has been in the open since September 2025, picking up steady updates since. What separates it from most Minecraft horror is that being frightened is not the only thing being asked of you.
A lot of horror maps give you nothing and ask you to run. This one hands you equipment, then makes it scarce. There are weapons, there is a shop with prices attached, and there is a Molotov that stuns what it hits rather than removing it. The creator's own update notes describe tuning resource availability, cutting shop prices and adjusting which weapons appear in which chapter, the vocabulary of a survival game rather than a haunted corridor.
The practical consequence is that decisions carry between rooms. Spending everything to get through one encounter comfortably can leave you short later, and a stun buys distance rather than solving the problem in front of you. If you tend to hoard consumables in survival games until they become useless, that instinct will hurt here in the opposite direction.
Puzzles and exploration sit alongside that. The forest and the sewer system beneath it are the map's early ground, and progress comes from reading the environment and piecing a case together rather than from following a corridor.
Three instructions come attached to the map, and each one has teeth.
Keep the resource pack on at all times. It arrives inside the download rather than as a separate file, and the map's atmosphere and custom assets depend on it. This is not a cosmetic preference.
Never switch to Peaceful. The creator states plainly that doing so breaks the map. That is worth taking literally: this is not a warning that the map gets easier, it is a warning that it stops working. Anyone who reflexively drops to Peaceful when a horror map gets uncomfortable should know that the escape hatch is nailed shut.
Only leave after a chapter ends. Quitting partway through a chapter risks progression problems, which effectively makes chapter boundaries the map's save points. Plan sessions around them. If you are playing with other people, it also means agreeing in advance where you intend to stop, because one person leaving mid-chapter is not a neutral act.
The current build targets Minecraft 26.1.2, and that is the version to play it on. The download table lists the range the map's releases cover behind it, and taking the row that names your version is the reliable way to pick one.
The reasoning is ordinary Minecraft mechanics rather than anything exotic. Maps of this kind lean on command and datapack systems whose formats and syntax shift between releases, so a world built against one version can load on a newer one and still have its scripted logic misfire. Nothing announces the failure: events simply do not fire, and it reads as a bug in the map rather than a version mismatch.
Some download aggregators list this map for other versions entirely, including 1.20.1. Those listings contradict the creator's own page and should not be used to pick a version.
Searching turns up an oddity worth explaining, because it makes people think they have found the wrong thing. The official Planet Minecraft page is titled Project Elek [26.1.2], but its web address still reads project-b-45-horror-map-demo.
That address preserves two obsolete facts at once. "Project B-45" was an earlier working title, and "demo" described the state of a much smaller release. Neither describes what is there now: the map has been updated repeatedly through 2026 and runs at least as far as a fourth chapter. Planet Minecraft addresses are fixed when a project is first posted and do not follow later renames, so the slug is a fossil rather than a signal. Project Elek and Project B-45 are the same map, and there is no separate demo to hunt for.
Up to four players can go through it together, and the same rules apply with more force. Everyone needs the resource pack active, since a server will not push the bundled copy out on its own. Each player installs it the same way they would any other resource pack. Difficulty stays off Peaceful for everyone.
Co-op also changes the tone rather than just the headcount. Shared resources mean the shop economy is now a group decision, and horror pacing built for one person lands differently when someone is talking over it. Playing with one other person tends to preserve more of the intended atmosphere than filling all four slots.
If you would rather not host anything yourself, the map is set up for instant multiplayer through StickyPiston, which is the quickest route to a shared session without touching server files.
Some things worth knowing simply have not been published, and it is more useful to say so than to guess.
There is no official playtime. The chapter structure and the creator's advice to stop only between chapters suggest an experience meant to span several sittings, but no total has been stated and estimates circulating elsewhere are not sourced. The total number of chapters has not been stated either, and since the map is still being revised, treating any figure as final would be premature. There is also no published content-warning list. The map is psychological horror with combat and pursuit, which sets a reasonable expectation, but if you are sensitive to specific triggers such as flashing effects, no official statement covers them either way.
Download it from the creator's Planet Minecraft page. Mirrors exist, several carry wrong version information, and the map is still being updated, so a copy taken from a reupload may already be behind. If you want more Minecraft horror afterwards, The Backrooms works a very different, more atmospheric angle, and Escape the Lost Halls is the closer match if the puzzle and progression side appealed more than the fear. Poison is the closest in spirit: another tightly specified horror map that expects you to build the setup it was written against.
Everything else depends on this. In the launcher, create an installation pinned to 26.1.2 rather than editing whichever profile you normally play on. The map is built against that release and the creator states it will not work on others, so a newer version is not a reasonable substitute even if the world loads.
No mod loader is involved. There is no Fabric, no Forge and no OptiFine step here. The map runs on plain Java Edition, and anything you already have installed for other worlds is unnecessary.
Download from the creator's Planet Minecraft page. Unzip the archive and look inside before moving anything: what belongs in your saves directory is the world folder itself, the one containing level.dat. Copying the zip across, or copying a wrapper directory that merely holds the world folder, is the usual reason a map never turns up in the world list.
On Windows the destination is %appdata%\.minecraft\saves. If you use a custom game directory for your 26.1.2 installation, use that folder's saves instead, since the launcher will not look anywhere else.
The resource pack ships inside the map rather than as a separate download, so there is nothing extra to fetch. When you first open the world Minecraft offers to enable it; accept. Decline it by mistake and you can trigger the prompt again by leaving the world and re-entering.
The creator asks that it stays active for the whole playthrough. Switching it off partway is not a cosmetic change; the map's custom assets go with it.
Set the difficulty to anything except Peaceful. Peaceful is documented as breaking the map, and because the failure is a progression one rather than a crash, it will not be obvious that this was the cause.
Plan where you intend to stop. Quitting mid-chapter risks progression problems, so treat the end of a chapter as the point at which it is safe to close the game.
Up to four can play together. On a server, the bundled resource pack is the part that needs attention: servers do not hand out a world's embedded pack, so pull the pack file out of the world folder and have every player install it into their own resourcepacks folder before joining. Without it they will be missing the map's custom assets while everyone else sees them.
Everyone also needs to be on 26.1.2, and the Peaceful rule applies to the server's difficulty setting rather than to individual players. For a session without any of this setup, the map can be launched as an instant multiplayer server through StickyPiston.
No builds match these filters.
Better not to. The creator warns that leaving mid-chapter risks progression problems, which effectively makes chapter boundaries the map's save points. Plan sessions around them, and if you are playing with other people, agree in advance where you intend to stop, because one person leaving mid-chapter is not a neutral act.
Minecraft 26.1.2 on Java Edition. The creator states the map is built for that release and will not work on others, so pin a launcher installation to 26.1.2 rather than using a newer version.
It is not supported. Maps built on command and datapack systems can load on a newer release and still have their scripted events fail silently, which looks like a broken map rather than a version problem. Some aggregator sites list other versions such as 1.20.1; those contradict the creator.
Both. It can be played alone or by up to four people together. The map can also be launched as an instant multiplayer server through StickyPiston if you would rather not host it yourself.
No. It runs on vanilla Minecraft Java Edition with no mod loader, no Fabric or Forge and no OptiFine. Everything custom is built into the world and the resource pack that comes with it.
Yes, and it is included in the download rather than being a separate file. Minecraft offers to enable it when you first load the world in singleplayer. The creator asks that it stays on for the whole playthrough.
No. The creator states directly that switching to Peaceful breaks the map. Use any other difficulty. Because it breaks progression rather than crashing the game, the cause is easy to miss once it has happened.
No official playtime has been published. It is divided into chapters and the creator advises only stopping once a chapter has ended, which points to something meant to be played across several sessions rather than in one sitting.
Yes. Project B-45 was an earlier working title, and the Planet Minecraft address still contains it along with the word demo. Those addresses are set when a project is first posted and do not change on rename, so both are leftovers rather than a separate release.
From the creator's Planet Minecraft page. The map is still receiving updates, so copies on reupload sites can be behind, and several list version information that conflicts with the creator's own.
Escape the Lost Halls is a hard Minecraft adventure map by Urgle in which the goal is not to find an exit but to track down and capture a wandering entity called the Eye. Built for one to three players, with custom tools, cinematics and an embedded resource pack.
The Backrooms is a large Minecraft: Java Edition horror map by Tripwirelessmc, published as "The Backrooms - A Complete Horror Experience". It collects more than twenty interactive Backrooms levels across roughly five million blocks, built with command blocks rather than mods, and adds custom entities, items and puzzles. It runs on unmodified Minecraft, but it is a heavy download.
Terra Restore 2 is an unfinished adventure and CTM hybrid map for Minecraft Java Edition by Mithey. Its latest publicly listed release, v0.3.5 Alpha, covers nine of the sixteen planned wool objectives across roughly eleven to fourteen hours and stops before the story concludes.
