Minetest Game (abbreviated MTG) is a simple and peaceful sandbox game, with no real goals or built-in enemy mobs.
While it provides a basic gameplay experience out of the box, it is best played with mods.
Minetest Game is currently in maintenance-only mode, meaning it will not see new gameplay features or anything else that breaks compatibility (See #2710).
Features
Overview
- Over 200 node types to mine and built (See Nodes for an overview)
- Deep underground with 7 different minerals and lava
- 6 tool strengths from wood to diamond
- Creative mode in which (almost) all items are instantly available
The world
- Several biomes to discover: Grasslands, desert, jungle, ocean, savannah, decidious forests, coniferous forests, snow, cold desert, glacier
- Underground dungeons
- Small and large underground caves
- Underground lava pockets
- 6 minerals: coal, iron, copper, gold], mese and diamond, used to craft tools and stuff
- Rare mese block at below Y=-1024 (equals 9 mese crystals)
- 6 tree types: "normal" tree, apple tree, jungle tree, acacia tree, aspen tree, pine tree. Includes saplings to grow new trees
- 6 flowers (used to create colors), waterlily, mushrooms and some other small plants
Craftable tools
- Tools to destroy blocks: Pickaxe (for stones), shovel (for dirt and sand), axe (for wood and trees), sword (for leaves and small plants)
- Most tools can also be used as melee weapons
- Screwdriver (used to rotate stuff)
- Bucket for collecting liquids like water
- See Items for more
Other gameplay aspects
- Go over the sea with boats
- Build rails and ride in a cart to transport yourself and items
- Use the furnace to smelt ores to ingots, use ingots to craft new stuff
- Basic farming: Till soil with a hoe, plant wheat and cotton seed, put water nearby and watch them grow
- When a player dies, the player might lose the items in the inventory which can be retrieved from a bones block
- Fire!
- TNT and gunpowder
Great modding base
Minetest Game provides a solid yet playable modding base.
This is not a game, it's bad advertising and it's constraining
If the game was called "Minetest Modding Base", "Minetest Core" or whatever, and people were warned it's just a base, it'd be fine. But it's not: Minetest Game is the greatest factor pushing new players away, as it's shipped by default with Minetest, having people thinking it's Minetest itself.
Every time I have someone downloading Minetest - and I'd like to stretch every time - I have to warn them to NOT play in singleplayer, at least not without having downloaded something from ContentDB first. This because, what people expect from a game/engine which resembles MineCRAFT starting by its very name, is to play a MineCRAFT clone by default. So wait: no monsters. No nether. No villagers. No blocks dropped. No challenge. NO GOALS. Hence the uninstalling and the very bad first impression. As I stated multiple times, this is very very very bad advertising. I don't have data, but if I had to guess how many people uninstalled MT after the first experience into a MTG world, it'd be a lot.
Also, I understand MT actually was born as a game, but that idea evidently failed, because this is NOT a game, this is THE FOUNDATION to create a very specific game (Minecraft, which afaik it was the initial goal). This is "create your personal Minecraft without sweating too much... kinda". So, if some developers keep denying that Minetest and Minecraft are the same (paramat actually called it Minecraft-like), this should be at least not be shipped by default. Because the more it gets shipped by default, the more likely modders will create mods depending on it, rooting it into the status quo even more, creating more bad advertising and pushing away more potential players.
And in all honesty, we don't need another Minecraft: pragmatically speaking, people nowadays are not taught the difference between proprietary and free software in school, and definitely it's not a hot topic in general.
[IT CONTINUES IN THE COMMENTS, THERE IS A CHARACTER LIMIT]
good ol' minetest_game
No objective. Nothing interesting in the game that could become an objective. No threats to the player other than the player himself. No mobs. Almost no audio. Combat is just clicking things.
Created by cargo-culting all the design decisions of Minecraft, but not executing them as well, this game is bound to bore you to death. Mine ores, make blocks out of them. Make huge ghost towns where the only interesting thing to do is to find the tallest building, climb it, then jump from it to your death. You can also pick some flowers, farm some cotton and make crude sprites. Or you could write expletives on wooden signs. So much fun! Travel vast landscapes while thinking of all the cool things you would do in them, if they were implemented. Explore dark dungeons for treasures such as: used shovel, a few cotton strings, some old apples and a bar of iron. Don't worry, nobody is guarding that anyway. If you're feeling really adventurous, you can duel another player to the death. Your fate will then be decided by how many apples you are carrying, and how fast you can devour them while rapidly clicking the other guy.
You could say it's a modding base, but it's hard for mods to improve something that has almost no base gameplay. You can install as many mods as you like, but it will always feel like something important is missing. There isn't enough of a game in this to set a bar for quality, or a solid direction, so the mods will never fit one another too well.
It might be possible to get an okay-ish experience playing on a small server ran by someone with taste, but most servers for this are giant boring malls, overloaded with ill-fitting content, and usually just being an excuse for the admin to show off his creative mode builds.
That said, if you are planning to code something better, you should still have a copy of minetest_game at hand - just in case you need some example code for a feature that isn't too well documented.
Vanilla
Some might consider vanilla ice cream as "plain" or "lacking" but true vanilla ice cream is made with a rare spice that is wonderfully balanced in a way that is uniquely pleasurable while being harmonious with many other flavors. Minetest Game (MTG) is very much analogous to this, lending itself as a base for many mods or a testing platform. One can find much pleasure in simply exploring landscapes, hiking about picking mushrooms, lazily boating the calm waters or delving dark and often dangerously precipitous caves!
Very bad as a standalone game, shouldn't be default game. But OK for creative building and modding
I have been a long-time vocal critic of MTG, and for a number of reasons. This post serves as a summary. Review for version: 5.5.0
The biggest problem, tho, is that MTG just "feels" incomplete. In essence, MTG is a Big Empty Sandbox that Jim-Stephanie Sterling talked about on the Jimquisition. Meaning, the world is large, but the number of different things you can do is very small. It thus feels "empty".
So what can you do? You can explore the world, but the biomes don't offer special items that advance the game (except food, maybe). You can go mining, but it's easy to get to the best ore, the diamond ore. You can farm blocks and build, and you can farm wheat and cotton. And this is ... mostly it, apart from some smaller features. Needless to say, a new player will have explored all the major features fast. Not being able to do various different things is the death for any sandbox.
Thus, you run out of new things to do in MTG fast. Once you get the best tools, farmed some resources, built some things, that's all the game offers, basically. MTG is fine if you really only care about raw creative building. The selection of blocks is fine, and people did build amazing things in MTG.
But IMHO, the standalone MTG is completely uninteresting as a game. It is, however, extensively used for servers, but in a heavily modded form. As a basis for servers to add mods on, MTG has done its job well. As a basis for modders, MTG does an OK job.
But most players want more than just a raw sandbox. MTG does not deserve its special status as a default game and should therefore lose it. That MTG is still the default game is the single-most damaging thing to the whole community, because it makes such a bad first impression. Thankfully, development focus has mostly moved away, as MTG is currently in "maintenance/bugfix-only" phase.
Full disclosure: I did contribute some smaller features and bugfixes in the past and also a translation. But not the big stuff.
Loved to play it and it makes a great starting point
While I understand some people frustration from the fact that Minetest Game is monotous, it serves a pourpose indeed: it is that it is more of exploration, construction and a peacefull mode of gameplay rather than the actual survival one.
Rebranding as Minetest Creative could eventually fix it. The fact that it lacks the survival experience indeed pushes away a lot of people, but this is trivially fixed by browsing Content DB. Perhaps some invite to do so at the home page of the menu could be more interesting so the popularity ranks by Content DB could fix the push-back somehwat easily.
It does also serves as a base to invite you to mod it. To me the fact it lacks stuff made me into the whole modding part so it is a good thing from that perspective.
Overall, I like the concept, idea and implementation!
maybe good moding base
Great since a lot of mods support it, makes for a very customizable game play. however perhaps it could be better suited for a modding base by just providing apis
boring. can be used only as a modding base
playing MTG without mods is boring. veeeeeeery boring.
mobs? no. electricity (mesecons)? no. farming (with something else than boring cotton and wheat)? NO. armor? monsters? maybe at least nyan cats? NO. NO! NO!!!
meh.
Recommended for those looking to curate their own experience more
With 5.8.0 now out, this game ("Minetest Game", or MTG for short) is no longer bundled with every copy of Minetest. This is a victory for an increase in the diversity of games on Minetest the Engine, but I believe there are still plenty of compelling reasons to play this game as what it says on the tin: a modding base.
While there are an increasing number of mods for Mineclone, NodeCore, Exile and others, and those will probably continue to grow, there is still a wealth of mods to be found for this game that are exclusive to it or support maybe one other game. This includes several categories:
This is not to say those mods are guaranteed to stay on MTG forever, but the best way to experience a lot of content made for Minetest is currently to play MTG.
Outside of existing content, I think the longevity of MTG will continue for some time. It is a mostly unopionated, lightweight (detractors may say "content-devoid"), stable game which still gets bug fixes to this day. It has been used for a number of notable forks like MeseCraft and Dreambuilder. Start learning mod-packing and mod writing for Minetest with MTG today!
classic
its the classic minetest. i really like it! but without mods its a bit,boring.
Needs few more things.
This needs few more things, because there are no NPCs, no monsters, dungeons are small and sword is useless. That "Minetest Core" needs few more things, like jukeboxes, villages, dimensions, or bigger dungeons, XP system, hunger, thirst, better textures, realistic crafting, damage when you punch wood with hands, mineshafts, and structures.
anything here?
No goals, no interesting, no mobs, no combat, no audio, no lore.
Use this as sample code for modding, not as a full game
Minetest is a game engine. This package "Minetest Game " is like a demo world, not a fully featured game. Don't judge the capabilities and potential of the Minetest engine based on this demo package. To do this is similar to downloading Unreal Engine, starting up a sample project with the demo player and demo map, then throwing up your arms and saying "this game sucks".
What you can do you use Mintest Game as a base to further mod the game into whatever gameplay experience you want. If you're not into creating your own mods, there are plenty of community-made mods that you add on top of Minetest Game to tailor it into the gameplay experience you want.
If you're not into modding whatsoever, and just want to play a game, then check out packages that are intended as fully featured games, like MineClone2, NodeCore, Exile, etc. Enjoy.
Bring on the mods...
This is my favourite game, it's a blank slate waiting for your own mods to be added.
boring, no mobs, not original
This package is hardly a game because there's almost nothing to do in it. The world is static, quiet and emtpy. There are no mobs and structures that spawn are boring "dungeons" that are basically small rooms from mossy cobble with chests and that's all. In the caves there are only minerals that bring no value because there's nothing intresting to build from them. The caves go as far as -31 000 nodes but barely anything changes as you go down. The only thing you can do in this "game" without installing mods is building cities with nothing inside.
This package is a bad advertisment for Minetest and made me drop it for 4 years because I simply thought it's not finished after playing. "I'll wait for them to add some mobs" I thought. The only good part about this package is that some biomes look nice, but that's about it. This empty husk of a game is a bad attempt at reproducing Minecraft that ultimately fails. The only innovation is that apples grow on trees.
As far as the "modding base" fairy tale goes, this game has no gameplay on its own so why use it as a base? A base like this has no philosophy on its own which makes it essentially a dumpster for mods, perfect for creating mod soups and Frankenstein games.
If you want a Minecraft clone, play MineClone2. Want something original? We have NodeCore, Exile, Glitch, Hades. There are so many better options than this.
Of its time, which is no longer now
This game is quite an intresting game. It provides a barebones experience and isn't much fun on its own. There is little to do. This is part of its beauty; you need mods to be able to have a good time. This makes every game experience a customised mixing pot of the work of decks (10s) of people, sometimes even hundreds. It's such a shame the game is called "game", and not "base". It's not a game, at least not anymore.
However, a lot of it is now irrelevant for the modern scene, however. Butterfiles and fireflies are an extra feature very few people would want. Vessels are not a feature i have ever used, save for the completely unrelated Piranesi game. These extra mods are now nothing more then bloatware. And it's not like the games improving! It's in a maintenence-only mode. There's nothing being added or removed to make the game more cohesive.
The inventory sucks nowdays in comparison to the modern systems like Unified Inventory or the Mineclone inventory. The trees are both too diverse and too regular; only the Acaia and Jungle trees stand out as unique in comparison to the monotony. Minetest game must leave more content up to the players.
And whilst this game might have proved instrumential to the modding community, over-reliance on it has forced the vast majority of players to play this game instead of alternatives worth more attention. This is a bad thing.
Review continues in a comment
A fresh slate for building upon
The game is simple, and it resembles an earlier version of the game it's inspired by. By itself, you may get bored if you like having npcs/entities around, or a gameplay mechanic like sprinting. However, the ease of installing mods to implement these features (and more) on top of Minetest Game is easy to do. The selection of mods available is sizeable enough where your gameplay experience can be as simple or curated as you want. And, you can make mods for the game to expand on existing features, or add something completely new.
Minetest Game is Minetest Game
XD it is the minetest game for minetest engine and yeah it is good modding base.
It's nicer then minecraft as modder
You have in mtg more freedom than in minecraft in fall mods. Thank you for no Overmodify!
Good base, not great standalone
It is actually really fun for the first few minutes, maybe even hours. You get to diamonds and build your first house, then what? That's it. By that point you have explored all of the meaningful content. The biomes are beautiful, but there is no reason to visit them. I recommend that the best lightweight community mods get included. There should be restrictions, obviously, but there is no reason not to add new content unless you just hate getting new and recurring players. Don't go overboard, but look at Minecraft, back at Minetest, then back at Minecraft again. Does it almost feel like something is missing? Sure, this is a community project, and will never get the polish or budget of Minecraft. But it does not have to stagnate. We could do better. And we should. Why settle for as good as the competition? Minetest as an engine can do things Minecraft could only dream of. Why let them have the game with more features? Sorry for the rant, but maybe we can make a change if there are enough voices.
More in comments.
A good game mode
Minetest Game is a good game mode and also because without the Minetest it would just be an empty cube, although it is very simple since it does not contain a large number of objects and does not include any type of NFC, its great compatibility with the mods of the community makes it compensates.
Minetest Game is a great mod even though it has its flaws and since it is open source it will surely be better in the future than it is today.
Average
The thing is why I'm giving this rating average is it's too simple and boring. Even Minecraft is more interesting that this. I know it's very well useful for modding and really lightweight so It's also useful for making other mini-games. If I don't want to mod for MTG, I should at least be able to uninstall it and free the disk space which I don't use. It is ridiculous when you can't uninstall something usless from your device.
Great base for modding
It provides a minimalist base for modding your game to your liking. It has some features and mechanics that are better than MC IMO, such as having the crafting table at the inventory, mined stuff goes directly to your inventory, picking up the items from the ground with a click (so your inventory won't get filled with crap when you run over items), stacks of 99 items.
Best Minetest Game
This is the BEST minetest game! You can build if you want, but you can also survive. And play with tech too! I hope you'll install it and hundreds of mods with it! 😃 Very good game and enjoy !
Vraiment sympa !
Le jeu est cool et ce n'est pas trop compliqué de jouer.
C'est idéal pour les débutant dans les jeux comme minecraft.
Classic and good with mods but not by itself
It is what Minetest is at it's most basic. While it functions extreemly well as a modding base. As a sandalone game it falls flat from a lack of content and not enough indication that it is meant to be moded. Causing alot of confusion and negative reviews from new players.
Great base game
To all the people giving this a thumbs down saying things like "it has no game features" and "its bad without mods" or whatever, yeah, it's not supposed to, it clearly states in the description it's purpose and it does it well. The entire point of minetest engine, and by extention minetest game as a whole is to be customized. It's not supposed to be a feature rich game out of the box.
So for what it's supposed to be, it's good.
Good modding base.
I use this to create basic mods.
A default game with minimal features
It's for anyone who wants a small, simple, good-looking environment, without difficulties.
Basic, but perfect if you just want to break and build stuff
If you want something that is just mining and resource management with no mobs, this is a great game. People are right that it is barebones, but that's the point: To show the basics of what this engine can do.
If you want mobs, mods are easy enough to add so you can have them or you can just play another game. Minetest Game also provides enough for somebody who just wants to mine and build to do so, which is perfect in its own way.
Easy to Use & Build Onto
Very useful for testing out mods and generally messing around.
Great for modding
Great for moddding, though I have noticed that sneaking is a bit buggy . I can jump two blocks if I am on a trap door or any block that is a similar shape and size. E.g if I am on a trap door and there are two blocks going up I can press shift and space and I will jump both blocks. I also have noticed crouching on a block sournded by snow I am able to fall of the edge. Other then that it is a great game.
Not a game
This definently is not a game. This is very plain and there's almost nothing to do by itself. If you did play this, you'll probably want to add mods.
As for the modding base. That's about the only thing this is good for.
I recommend you look through the 80 other games to find a better one to play.
Also you won't find new features in this anytime soon. This game is in a "permanent" feature freeze.
Good default game
Newcomers can easily learn things quickly, it is simple. Ofc, should be used with mods, but even without this can be considered as a game.
Basically just the default pack
I have actually found a use for this one.
Let's say you've accidentally deleted the "Minetest Game" that comes pre-packaged, then this will be useful as a replacement for that. Essentially a way to fix a broken package
Класс
С этого я и начал знакомство с игрой и её комьюнити)
Decent as a mod base, nice and simple
Mods are a must if you're looking to play this
It's horrible for game bases though, everything is in
default, and GPL licenses are annoying to work withjust some fixws
I just always play this as it can handle many mods but please could you add blueberry bush stem an 1 block big busshes so that it resembles azaelea of minecraft as I love azaelea
Just a bad modding base
And bad textures.
Ya es hora de morir
Este juego imita en ciertas cosas a MineCraft pero no en otras cosas en las que si deberia imitarlo... Dispuestos a copiar, pues copia bien, claramente MineClone lo hace mucho mejor.
Por desgracia muchos mods geniales han sido creados con este juego feo de base.
Ahora que MineClone2 esta alcanzando un nivel de madurez, este juego ya podria morir y dejar paso a su hermano mayor.
Los nuevos mods para este estilo supervivencia, deberian hacerse ya todos para MineClone, y portar a MineClone los mas viejos que fueron hechos para este juego.