Age of Mending
Formerly Parity of the Minor Bearing
A game about worldbuilding, homeliness and exploration.
Warning!
This game is in development. Expect sporadic and occasionally breaking updates to happen, even possibly causing world corruption or loss of items. The entire design and structure of the game may change between updates without notice.
Known breaking changes are listed in the short description, but there is no guarantee this covers all possible breaking changes. If you are on version 20 and the description says the last breaking update was 21, you can be sure that updating to 21 or higher will break at least something.
Changelog: https://codeberg.org/Age_of_Mending/Age_of_Mending/releases
Quick Overview
- has a lot of graphical effects that make it not a potato compatible game
- is not "survival voxel game" in the traditional sense; no tool durability, no grinding, no progression tree or dopamine tredmill
- somewhat stable, but not reliable; things might be jank but probably won't crash at least in singleplayer
- a fair amount of content, but not a lot of gameplay aside from the core premise of building a world for yourself
- art and "creative potential" focused, meaning it cares more about enabling player creativity than about balance or "things to do"
About Alpha
As stated in the warning at the top of the page, the game is not in a "stable release" state. Instead, I make rapid changes to the game on a "when I feel like it" basis. This will be the case until beta when it will move to a more stable and "careful" state. Until then, this is a kind of "preview of development" first, and a playable game second. You can readily assume any individual part of the game is a placeholder and many things will be unpolished or jank. See the issues on the repo for more info.
The game's design direction may also shift, and with this some feature might be removed. That's the price to pay for a game in alpha. There will be no expectation that the design will continue on the same path.
My approach to development is this: I want to make a cool game. If you want to play it, here it is. The social contract I'm offering is "you're free to play this thing I made" and nothing more.
Q and A
⠀What kind of game is it?
It is a sandbox, mechanics-over-content world building game. The style or setting is early gunpowder era with low fantasy elements (think LoTR level magic at most). The focus is on the player building, exploring and defending their own home and world. World building and creating a place for yourself is what it should be best at. It is not about mining for materials or grinding for better gear, it is about constructing an immersive and meaningful place in a world.
⠀Is this server-ready?
No, but you're welcome to try, just post your crash reports in the issue tracker.
⠀Is it ever going to be finished?
Yesn't.
⠀Is it actually playable as a game?
Yes, but it's missing a lot of gameplay since it's not as progression focused as a lot of games.
⠀How buggy is it?
Crashes are somewhat rare usually, and things mostly work, but the problems are less crashes and more "why are all the caves so cramped" or "why can I sneak on ladders" or "why am I inside the ground now" and so on. Not catastrophic, but certainly very jank.
⠀Is it stable?
No. It is not stable. Fundamental concepts like tool durability, inventories, tool tiers, and more are all completely up in the air and may be removed at any time. I can't and won't be nice about back compatability, and I won't compromise on that since it would grind development to even more of a halt than my procrastination does.
⠀Is development active?
You should assume not. I go through periods obsessively working 12 hours on it per day and then go months without even looking at it. Hey, don't judge me like that.
⠀Why post it now?
People ask about it a fair bit, and so I figured I would just throw it on here and forget about it. This package will likely be replaced when entering stable / beta, and this will become the continuing unstable version. Then there would be a new package and new page for the stable version.
⠀It looks good, but does all that fancy make it laggy?
Eh, sort of. In terms of FPS, it's slower than opaque leaves, but substantially faster than fancy alpha all faces leaves. For mapgen, it's slow. Yes. It's slow. That's something to work on during beta or later alpha though as this game isn't even finished conceptually yet. For server step, it's going to be slower than Minetest Game, but it's probably on par with MCL variants. Most parts of the game use timers and node updates instead of ABMs and globalsteps, so it mostly only runs code when it actually kind of needs to. Again something to improve across beta. It is worth noting that this is not only a pretty game with very little in the way of compromises on art, but it is also not a well optimised game, and will not run on a potato.
I get about 30-40fps with high shadows and a 300 or so view distance in dense forest areas, and about 40-50 with no shaders, using a GTX 1660ti mobile GPU (6gb, 1.4MHz). For comparison, in Mineclonia this same sort of test with no shaders is about 28-35fps in less forested areas and about 25fps with shaders. This is planned to be improved as well.
What would it look like when 'complete'?
This is all unlikely to be achieved any time soon or possibly at all, but it's the direction the game is heading in. This is the design doc, since it won't fit into CDB: https://docs.google.com/document/d/144b6nOspRn9LL5kVwgvZWrFiqJ4iEi5Qh7tU-OElwHo
World and lore
In the world there will be a few main types of creatures:
- dwarves and humans
- spirits
- animals
- demonkin
- half-demon half-animal magic beings
There is some lore to the world (secret), but no story or purpose beyond just "play the game and do what you want". There is no end or completion.
Cheatsheet
This obviously contains spoilers. Read at your own risk: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AnVzK9VIWa0uqQ6E9vq5Cc85B_E154CC_ZFP-NS9qOw/
Compatible with mte 5.6+. Other versions unknown. Definitely doesn't work on 4.x
Always using the newest version, assume no backwards compatibility.
Features missing as of version a24
These are some things you might assume to be part of a game like this, but are not implemented yet!
- combat system and actual weapons such as spears and swords
- mobs - there are some, but nowhere near the level that would be in the final game
- any actual crafting guide to tell you how to play the game - instead it has a Terraria-like crafting system, but you're still a bit blind as to what can be made if you got more materials
- structures - there are small schematic structures and ruins, but not any dungeons and villages etc
- spawn setting, spawning in wide areas instead of one point, PVP settings (on by default)
- several biomes not present, such as beaches, tundra mountains, arctic oceans / rivers
You can also see the issues tracker for more info on what to expect.
What does it have then?
- mapgen and biomes
- Terraria-like crafting system
- some mobs
- mob spawn inhibitors so you can have a safe home and peaceful builds
- ores, tools, and ore processing
- status effects for regen, featherfalling, poison etc
- crops and food
- cooking, furnaces, ovens
- pipes for item transport
- teleporters (hard to get for now)
- warpberries allowing the player to move between two locations easily
- bows
- wings and gliding, flight
- treefelling with axes
- ropes for climbing, ladders
- many many many building materials, types of bricks, shapes, colored terracotta, etc
- wrench which can bulk-build in a cube / wall / line etc
- the underworld, with its associated bricks and items
- a floating island defense gamemode (?windmills join) ... which may or may not work in multiplayer
- glowing mushroom biome (currently useless, but pretty)
- an airship
- lanterns, glow status effect for "dynamic" wearable lights, and a special item that allows for even better illumination ;)
- lots of bugs and I don't mean fireflies
The game is coded pretty much from the ground up, partially because there is the stipulation that it remains MIT licensed and avoids restrictive licensing, but also because of my predisposition to just make the thing rather than learn someone else's API. As a result, you can fully expect that just about no mods will work with it unless they've been very carefully and deliberately made to work agnostically.
Unfinished, but beautiful.
The basic gameplay is still about as boring as vanilla
Minetest Game… but world generation details, node textures, models, all the parts ofParity of the Minor Bearing [alpha]that seem actually finished just look incredible. The crafting interface still needs some work, but already offers the simplicity ofRepixture. If this is what passes for ”unpolished and jank”, Sumianvoice (the author) has admirable standards. I like the explicit anti-grind stance in the README a lot!Nevertheless … I can not recommend this game, simply because of the author's warning:
Other game and mod developers, take note: This is what being honest to users looks like.
@Sumianvoice I hope you finish this. When/if you do, I plan to adjust my review.
Very enjoyable game of exploration!
All aspects of this game seem to fit together well, and the texture-work is very nice. It gives a calming and laid-back feeling. It also breaks some of the tradition with similar games, and I think it is for the better in almost all cases. Crafting works differently, farming is a bit different. Smelting and cooking is different. I also really enjoy that items dropped on the ground will lay flat on the surface in different rotations. This makes picking up everything dropped when chopping down a tree a bit more interesting, and it looks better than floating/rotating items in my opinion. And while talking about trees, there are also a lot more realism to them here than I am used to. There are branches and leaves that makes these trees seem less blocky, and I think it works well.
The weather-features are also very nicely done. Seeking shelter while caught in the rain and thunder feels very cozy, and the sound-design adds to that feeling.
There are weapons that can be used for hunting, or for defending yourself against the mobs. Right now there are a few different variations of mobs, and I think none of them are the traditional ones we are used to seeing in these kinds of games.
There are also items to help with your travel/exploration. These also work well even if they are works in progess, and I feel that this is the right approach to encourage players to explore the surface areas and occasional ruins that you come across. There is also much to see below ground!
All in all, I think this is very high quality already, and it takes a reductionist approach to the whole exploration/crafting voxel game that I think is fresh, and gives me the same feeling as in the old days. Even if it is currently expected to break worlds on occasion during development, I would recommend spending a few hours with it, because the author is clearly going somewhere very nice with this.
Creator is an artist
You can tell that the creator of this game has an artist's eye. This is the only game that really interests me other than Minetest Game.
Pros:
Cons:
Summary, I hope a team of developers and artists help Sumanian Voice complete this game. Let Sumanian Voice be the visionary who makes all the decisions, but this will take a lot of work, and it truly deserves a team effort because it is so promising. I prefer it to Voxel Libre & Mineclonia, and the other games, many of which have large teams of devs working on them.
Here's what I would do with the leaf textures:
https://content.minetest.net/uploads/4f03378861.png
https://content.minetest.net/uploads/370a39402a.png
To get these colors I modified E:\games\minetest-5.8.0-win64\games\pmb_core\mods\pmb_nodes\pmb_wood\init.lua
From what I have seen its the most promising big project today in Minetest
A lot of effort was put into making this game stand out, make it unique, but not just for the sake of difference. Due to lots of low effort small projects it's harder to notice something like this, it deserves an upvote before beta
Simplement incroyable !
Il n'y à rien à redire ! Les textures sont novatrices, les fonctionnalitées sont develloppées jusqu'au moindre détails, les nouvelles mécaniques sot inédites et ingénieuses... Chaque nouvelle mise à jour à sont lot de surprises et d'émerveillements. Merci, continue comme ça !
Very beautiful, has potential
It has a very cohesive world with very well executed models and textures, it's still very fresh and lacks depth and game mechanics, it will eventually get to a point where the gameplay loop feels more compelling, but, even in the current state is worth testing out.
The mobs feel good as well, and I believe that's sign of a promising game and a capable developer, so with time I think this game has potential to become one of the best.
Enjoyable and pretty.
Editing to add: Add the "Item Physics" mor for extra enhancement
Just beautiful
Free! We are free. In this game we wander without a specific goal but we enjoy the landscape which is just breathtaking. The quality of the textures and menus is just exceptional. In addition, the tools all have a specific use. This game has a lot of potential for me whether in survival or creative (Even if the inventory can be improved for me in the future) I'm looking forward to future updates
It's quite entertaining.
It's interesting, I like the crafting system and it was fun to shoot dwarves with a musket
Postscript: There is a bug, when you die the game crashes.