The WhyNot? game is a mod collection style subgame based on minetest game. It can be enjoyed as both a survival challenge with many goals and different places to explore, or as a creative framework for building amazing things!
Survival
Upon entering the game, the player will see what appears to be a plain Mintetest Game. After a brief moment of exploration, harvesting grass and cutting trees, you may come across some vegetables. Those can be harvested and re-planted to begin farming and be saved from starvation. Paying close attention to the surroundings, sounds and weather effects bring additional ambience.
Before the night falls, you will want to find, create or dig a simple shelter, as well as a light source... or get ready to fight some monsters. Be especially wary of ghosts as they are very strong for beginners. The 'E' key can be held in order to run away faster from your foes. Wielding a torch instead of a tool or weapon will illuminate the immediate surroundings. Craft some basic tools like a wood or stone pick axe to increase your odds of survival. Crafting is similar to Minetest Game and Minecraft, albeit without the need for a crafting table. The shapes can be found in the craft guide.
When the sun rises again it is time resume exploration and find a suitable place for a more permanent settlement. Then one should begin digging deeper to get more and better minerals.
Tracking Progress
The WhyNot? game uses three main mechanisms to track progress: a progressive craft guide, awards/achievements, and tool ranks.
As new materials are discovered, new recipes become visible in the craft guide. Discovering new materials and items also unlocks help documentation to provide assistance when needed. As such, it is one of the goals of the WhyNot? game to find as many materials as possible, and craft all the items available in order to discover the whole crafting tree.
The second mechanism to track progress is the awards. The awards will not only guide you towards your next steps, it will give challenging goals to achieve in completing the game.
Finally, tools and weapons can be repaired which, by itself, doesn't help save materials. However it allows them to level up! This makes them more resistant to wear, and more powerful too. To level up a tool, it must be used many more times than the usual wear and tear cycle. This is where repairing comes in. A repaired tool or weapon will be returned to new, but it's experience (usage counter) remains. Careful not to let them break though, as then the progress is lost.
Tools
Many tools have been added to the WhyNot? game that make life easier, and the game play more enjoyable. For example, those from mods like ccompass, engrave, flyingcarpet, handholds, helicopter, maidroid, orbs_of_time, rainbowswords, subspacewalker, and boost_cart as mesecons-enabled replacement for of MTG-carts. For communication or mini-games a laptop can also be crafted and used.
Monsters
The monsters from mobs_monster and ghosts provide extra challenges, especially deep underground with the dungeon masters.
Exploration
The exploration experience in WhyNot is seemingly very similar to Minetest Game at first. One of the first thing to notice is a deeper dirt and sand layer to dig before getting to rock. Tall mountains also have a novel look with a snowy top. With a bit of patience and hard work, a greater variety of dungeons may be found. While digging underground, ores are not available immediately. Rock, bronze, and steel tools will each need to be used longer and repaired to make it to the deeper layers. Back to top-side again, an airplane can be built to reach floating islands.
Creative Crafting and Building
The WhyNot? game contains many craftable decorative items, furniture, and building materials from mods like like abriglass, homedecor, mydoors, myroofs, princess, ts_furniture, curtain, flower_pot, realchess, campfire, dice2, heads, mtg_plus, plasticbox, slats, and more!
There are many types of armours to build, and clothes to weave with cotton and colored with dyes.
Some but not all of mesecons is also available to build machines.
Release Notes
Version 2023-03-16 Release notes:
We've removed the endless apples alias. Super unlikely this effects anyone, but there's a slim chance of some unknown nodes from 2018.
Version 2022-11-10 Release notes:
Whynot's under the GPLv3 only. This means that unfortunately, the helicotper mod (which was under GPLv2-only ) had to be removed, since it isn't GPLv3 compatible. We are looking for a clean-room replacement of similar feature-set that provides an upgrade path.
Version 2022-04-01 Release notes:
I given up the "player_api_modpack" (https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20682). All mods from this modpack are replaced by orginial forks and skinsdb. Fensta-skins users need to re-download the skins using skinsdb downloader. Just copying files does not work because the meta-files format is not compatible. place_your_skins_here mod does not have replacement. Users have to move own skins into skinsdb textures folder. The meta-files incompatibility (if used) applies here to.
The Usual
Whynot is another example of "mod soup", games that collect existing mods and put them on Minetest Game in an attempt to make it fun. I don't have anything against this on principle, but I've yet to see such an effort produce a good game. Sadly, Whynot also fails in this regard.
Whynot does add some quality of life (such as wielded lightsources producing light) and external pressures like hostile mobs and a hunger meter. But honestly, it doesn't do nearly enough--In the time I spent playing I saw exactly two monsters, and neither one did much of anything. That really just leaves hunger, which will cease to matter the moment any farm begins producing. This means the player doesn't have much driving them to actually enter the game loop.
There are other possible avenues to drive players to play. For instance, Whynot does have awards! However, none of them are really well-designed. They mostly revolve around "dig/place x of node y", and offer no interesting goals. Another possibility is exploration, but from what I've seen there's very little to be found. The biomes are identical to MTG, and the only obvious difference I saw was a handful of floating islands. Most of these had nothing, and just checking them involves pillaring up over 100 nodes... nothing feels worse than being led to do busywork for no payoff.
So fittingly, my answer to "Why not?" is "Why?" Why am I playing? It's not for building or decoration, thanks to the game's many clashing artstyles. It's not for action or survival, those systems are too anemic. It's not for exploration, there's little of note to be found. And it's not to achieve anything, since the game's achievements correspond more to rote grinding than to gameplay.
Ultimately, this is a very typical story. Remember, modders--putting a large quantity of 'content' in a game does not make it good or interesting. Content exists to extend the life of something that is already good, the hook is far more important.
Great for getting into the Minetest scene
I've been aware of Minetest for many years, but only just recently started playing. This was the game of choice for a small five-person server and we've had a blast. Even though it's a big pile of mods, and some of them we don't like, it's a great introductory experience for us to see what's out there.
We've played for several hours and have resorted to installing two other mods: anvil and travelnet. We all hate weapon degradation and found anvil to be a good compromise. We also hated how it took many minutes to go down ladders to Minetest's 4096 resource-dense level.
Eventually we'll probably adapt our world with other mods but this has been a great way to just play. Thanks to the maintainer(s)!
Not bad, not excellent.
At first it feels like a whole new world but then it gets boring. No set goal, even with awards mod. Some features are good, but some are bad. I don't recommend to someone who wants more from minetest.
Also for a mod I want added is epic_combat (modpack on my github). It makes mobs more common and adds more swords and PVP material. I want because Hugues Ross say not enough mobs.
Good but need update
This game need updates and/or QA testing. Hope it happens soon
I can´t feed myself, I always die and generates very plain worlds
I can´t feed myself, I always die and generates very plain worlds, I would be a great game but have these 2 big problems.
it's cool and it's communitary
I want to make a positive review as I like WhyNot? Because:
What I'd do to improve the project:
good luck! I'll track your progress! :-D
Put your risk into outdated mods
A "mod soup" is totally useless, cause server owners can (and should have the ability to) install all the mods one-by-one. Mush more, mod soups are outdated, and may place the server to secutiry risks.
MTG otra vez
MTG con mods, aburrido