Turn Kubernetes Pods into Minecraft Houses with Kubecraft

After Microsoft acquired Minecraft in 2015, it open‑sourced Dockercraft , a project that lets players start or stop Docker containers directly inside the game; each container appears as an N×N block house displaying its name, processes, CPU and memory usage.

Inspired by Dockercraft, the community created Kubecraft , which manages Kubernetes clusters in the same way: each house represents a Pod, and the house’s internal switch can destroy the pod.

Docker deployment (run the container):

$ docker run -t -d -i -p 25565:25565 \
    --name kubecraft \
    -e KUBE_CFG_FILE=/etc/kubeconfig \
    -v ~/.kube/config:/etc/kubeconfig \
    stevesloka/kubecraft

Kubernetes deployment (apply the following manifests):

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: kubecraft
  labels:
    app: kubecraft
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: kubecraft
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: kubecraft
    spec:
      affinity:
        podAntiAffinity:
          preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
          - podAffinityTerm:
              labelSelector:
                matchExpressions:
                - key: app
                  operator: In
                  values:
                  - kubecraft
              topologyKey: kubernetes.io/hostname
              weight: 1
      tolerations:
      - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/ingress
        operator: Exists
        effect: NoSchedule
      containers:
      - name: kubecraft
        image: stevesloka/kubecraft
        tty: true
        stdin: true
        env:
        - name: KUBE_CFG_FILE
          value: /etc/kubeconfig
        ports:
        - containerPort: 25565
          protocol: TCP
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /etc/kubeconfig
          subPath: kubeconfig
          name: kubeconfig
      volumes:
      - name: kubeconfig
        configMap:
          name: kubeconfig
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: kubecraft
  labels:
    app: kubecraft
spec:
  selector:
    app: kubecraft
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    name: http
    port: 25565
    targetPort: 25565

Both tty: true and stdin: true are mandatory; otherwise the container will not start.

Before deploying, create a ConfigMap to store the kubeconfig file, e.g.:

$ kubectl create cm kubeconfig --from-file=/root/.kube/config

Another related project, KubeCraftAdmin , uses animals to represent pods—killing a chicken deletes the corresponding pod.

References:

Dockercraft – https://github.com/docker/dockercraft

Kubecraft – https://github.com/stevesloka/kubecraft