The cube-based sandbox stuff-building game Minecraft gets a lot of attention for the creative works it inspires in-game. And that attention is well-earned, too; if you aren’t familiar, just pop “minecraft” into YouTube or GIS and prepare to have your mind blown. But what about the impressive Minecraft feats that aren’t enormous in-game structures?

Well, here’s at least one example of that. A Minecraft forum member by the name of Lilyo has created something pretty spectacular: he managed to put together a texture pack for the game that makes it resemble Portal almost perfectly. Check out the video below:

Pretty stunning effect, right? Sure, Portal is already a pretty flat game to begin with, but man, there are moments where that video is indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s all the more impressive once you realize that all he had to work with were 16×16 squares for all the textures.

Also, that portal effect at the end? Totally not a video editing trick. Lilyo says that the portals are both functional and multi-directional, meaning that the game more than looks like Portal – it (kind of sort of) plays like it, too. Unreal.

The best part of the video, though, has to be the hideous, cube-shaped recreation of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device in the lower-right. It took watching the video at least four times before I could identify that thing as the Portal gun. Not that I could do any better with just 96 pixels and a cube to work with. Just for kicks, here’s a side-by-side with the real thing:

Phenomenal.

(source)