From the art consistancy to the fun, hard to break gameplay. This game is very tied together and easy to understand. It's perhaps harder to see the aspect of "unexpected" to it, though in my opinion that really takes a backseat to the quality of the gameplay.
A lot of games for Minetest, even the relatively well-made ones, feel samey, too derivative. Nothing is ever wholly unique anymore, but Shadow Forest is not the usual fare that I expect out of Minetest. It is truly an game. It's also the first time I've thought "maybe ContentDB needs a souls-like tag", even if that's not the most accurate way to describe Shadow Forest.
You'll be running around at breakneck pace in this game, looking for the collectibles and dodging the baddies. The RPG elements, like Dark Souls, are gained at a campfire and are mostly there to help to help improve your stats if you are struggling. If you're good at the game, or speedrunning, then they're completely optional. You may want some damage upgrades though as the final boss can be a bit of a bullet sponge.
The game is visually and aurally appealing. It has a proper aesthetic going. It has a moral to the story. It has nice and themed level design. The 1.0 Game Jam version had issues with being swamped with infinitely-spawning mobs, and a lot of high frequencies in the staff noises. The 1.1 release leaves the game hard in spots but not unbeatable, and the staff sounds are much better.
Wuzzy is an expert with Minetest and it shows. Shadow Forest makes use of a recent feature that controls the fog distance independent of your settings. It also doesn't let you choose options like creative mode, enable health, and other things that can be left checked the wrong way for playing a Jam Game. One problem I had though was the dialogue didn't word wrap and ran off the right edge of the screen. This is at 1080p resolution fullscreen on my desktop monitor.
Took me ~20 minutes to play this through, I like the mechanics. The "health powder" feels like a bit of a cheat - I had plenty of it when I went into the boss fight.
The game is fun to play and I never felt like I was lost or confused when going through it, I think the worst thing I could say about it is that I forgot who the characters were when they reappeared later in the story (which is not really an issue, I think I managed to figure out who they were).
Does what it says it does, except there's nothing to do
You can truly embrace and discover air like you never have before. What's there not to like, I guess?
This is a negative review simply because there is no gameplay, absolutely nothing to do but fall and enjoy air. Anyone who downloads this might be in for a major disappointment, because Air Game is a legendary title. Take the title 100% literally, and you understand now!
Also give this man bonus points for unexpectedness :-)
Bugged release. Made me think about gamification and conditioning
In Robot Operator, you sneak into a robotics facility in search of a purported highly advanced and dangerous robot. What you find is a bunch of incredibly rudimentary robot puzzles, which you should ignore, and beeline straight to finding a dangerous one, then exiting with it.
However what I found myself doing was visiting each robot space and completing its puzzle, even though all I should have done is start each robot, and try to pick it up. One puzzle is even uncompletable, as there is not enough space for the number of commands that would be needed to complete it, which is very unsatisfying. This made me reflect on how I have been conditioned to completing objectives in games just because they are there.
Then there are the bugs and things that seem incomplete. You are briefed that the mission is highly dangerous, but all you will find are robot vacuums and little tank droids that won't damage you. I made sure I had creative mode off and damage on, but no damage, not even from stepping on them. The robots tend to get stuck in corners, too. There is something more dangerous than the robots though: falling into one of pits around the robot arenas, and never being able to escape. I assume that's why previous operators died on this mission and not the robots. The bigger problem though is that the robot that is the target has a bug where trying to pick it up with right-click will crash the game, which I had to fix to complete the game.
As with Nathan S.'s 2022 Jam, the visual art is pretty good, but there is not even a footstep sound and in fact the only sound I can recall is a little "whoosh" at the end. The game would really have benefitted from some sounds, which are easily available at places like Freesound.
Very great mod, but unfortunately not for Mineclon(e2/ia)
I think it is cool, that the "Pizza Oven" has no graphical interface! I like the textures too.
Only 2 thinks:
I think, it would be better, if the Oven went on with a flint an steal, not with a torch.
Mineclone2 is the most popular game, but this mod needs the default mod wich Mineclone do not has. I can transfer "Pizzaria" in Mineclone, if it is ok?!? I would need maximum 1 week.
It looks promising, but unfortunately it doesn't load and apart from that, it is very heavy. I hope it can improve, since it seems to be of very good quality.
I think, it is a good idea, becaurse if players die, the stuff of them will despawn very fast, and when (he/she) can not find the die-place so fast, the stuff is away for
ever.
A little tip:
In the textures folder is the texture "mcl_formspec_itemslot.png" that is for the chest-slots. You can use the Itemslot-textures, of the Mineclone game (for
example: "mcl_formspec_itemslot.png"). Then you save storage space.
Much success with your mod!
It's good for survival, but it has a detail that makes it a little irritating.
I like this feature, as a decoration or useful for making bonemeal.
But in my opinion I think that the skeleton hitbox should be simpler, like a block; Since when you point at the skeleton it doesn't look very nice, it is also intricate to build with them. Because commonly I point to one of the faces but the block is placed anywhere else.
Postscript: The models are extremely well made, only the hitbox is the problem.
Random messages can be helpful if they push messages out to users who otherwise aren't aware of their content or are new and looking for hints. They quickly get old, boring, repetitive and tend to exacerbate the feeling of loneliness if the server is empty of other players, as you're reminded that you're playing multiplayer and not singleplayer.
I would give the mode a thumbs up if users could opt out. Now that the mod has been updated, I will recommend it to server admins. But personally I'm not a fan of random indiscriminate messaging, so I would opt out after playing on the server for a while.
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:
Mods with a lot of extra worldgen that could theoretically be presented as their own game, such as Ethereal and Australia, but also integrate nicely with other mods in the MTG ecosystem
Many other mods; see the mods included with forks of MTG for plenty of examples.
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!
I like these monsters. They look disstressing and are quite powerful. Not sure why, they don't spawn on surface. Even though I edited the spawn.lua file.
A strange wonderful puzzle game spanning paradigms, and full of possibility
Nodecore will be many things to different players. The nodecore you're presented with when you play for the very first time is an open world take on a puzzle game. The experience invariably starts with "wow, I can't mine a tree with my bare hands? how am I meant to gain its powers?" Details aside, with diligence, you may come to find that you can indeed gain the tree's powers. Then the puzzles quickly open up, with many avenues you can explore... replenishing the earth. Harnessing fire. Delving for signs of ores. It becomes hard to call it a "puzzle game," yet it remains hard not to call it one.
You learn to interact with bits of the world and craft more stuff, little by little, and it paints an immersive big picture. There's an elegant minimalism, with nodes having a variety of uses, and many parallels in the recipes and interactions. As you tech up, you find more opportunities for optimization and process refinement, and similarities in different interactions allow you to get creative making infrastructure with multiple uses.
Nodecore's detractors will claim that the game is too hard to play as intended, and that it's not reasonable to expect someone to figure out the game's mysteries with only what it provides. Are they right? Well, sorta. Mostly yes. It depends on the player, really. But you don't have to play "as intended"! So by all means, you should give it a try, and if you get stuck, come ask the community. Nodecore players will generally give gentle hints at first, in the spirit of the puzzle. But if you get seriously frustrated, just be direct and honest about what aspects of the game you aren't enjoying, and request more direct information. The game opens up from exploration of mechanics to engineering with those mechanics, and it's valid to end up skipping the first step. Just try it first so you don't rob yourself of the chance to enjoy it. If you do skip to engineering gameplay, though, it stands out on its own.
Not that good for survival because most drinks satiate the same as blueberries and take twice the inventory space (one for full glass bottles and one for empty ones) But still this mod is very well made, the models and textures are good, the bamboo trick is nice too, the models are great and now you can "eat" cactuces. If you want more food items just for the sake of it i recommend this mod.
Played this game for a while, enjoyed it overall.
This game is about getting knowledge through experimenting and employing that knowledge to make stuff, pretty much the scientific method.
Some puzzles are easier than other, for example I had no problems with fire, glass or the metal stuff, but I still haven't figured out leaching water through soil.
The natural world is far from exciting so the game could get some improvements there, the only exploring I did was basically finding pumwater.
Nevertheless the world is calm and soothing which is nice.
That's not your typical Minecraft clone - you will need patience and a brain for this one.
Pvp need a refresh and this mod can do it well, but a bit laggy even on a good pc, resulting in fps drops, also the sound effect plays after 2 seconds. Maybe by reducing particles the lag go away? I'm not sure.
I was always wanting to see this cool af land, I suck at coding and someone making this splendid thing in mtg is commendable, I had plans for this but as I told earlier it could have taken a long way to get this thing done, but what you did is splendid, love it.
You can craft a stack and not have to worry about going back and forth to get water when making a farm. Its useful if you want to make floating farms with no base underneath the layer of earth or if you are using one of those mods that gives earth gravity and want to put it underneath the earth. Would be nice if it was compatible with wooden buckets but it still is an amazing and simple mod
Enjoyable!
I like the graphics as well as the gameplay. The trick is to not fight too much, but to make a run for it ;P
By far my favorite
From the art consistancy to the fun, hard to break gameplay. This game is very tied together and easy to understand. It's perhaps harder to see the aspect of "unexpected" to it, though in my opinion that really takes a backseat to the quality of the gameplay.
Well done sir.
A hardcore but enjoyable shooter-platformer game
A lot of games for Minetest, even the relatively well-made ones, feel samey, too derivative. Nothing is ever wholly unique anymore, but Shadow Forest is not the usual fare that I expect out of Minetest. It is truly an game. It's also the first time I've thought "maybe ContentDB needs a souls-like tag", even if that's not the most accurate way to describe Shadow Forest.
You'll be running around at breakneck pace in this game, looking for the collectibles and dodging the baddies. The RPG elements, like Dark Souls, are gained at a campfire and are mostly there to help to help improve your stats if you are struggling. If you're good at the game, or speedrunning, then they're completely optional. You may want some damage upgrades though as the final boss can be a bit of a bullet sponge.
The game is visually and aurally appealing. It has a proper aesthetic going. It has a moral to the story. It has nice and themed level design. The 1.0 Game Jam version had issues with being swamped with infinitely-spawning mobs, and a lot of high frequencies in the staff noises. The 1.1 release leaves the game hard in spots but not unbeatable, and the staff sounds are much better.
Wuzzy is an expert with Minetest and it shows. Shadow Forest makes use of a recent feature that controls the fog distance independent of your settings. It also doesn't let you choose options like creative mode, enable health, and other things that can be left checked the wrong way for playing a Jam Game. One problem I had though was the dialogue didn't word wrap and ran off the right edge of the screen. This is at 1080p resolution fullscreen on my desktop monitor.
Good game, I give it a 5/7.
Good game
Took me ~20 minutes to play this through, I like the mechanics. The "health powder" feels like a bit of a cheat - I had plenty of it when I went into the boss fight.
wow an update, now we have lavagold PART (CHAPTER) 2!!!!1141!
can't wait to see what did the LAVAGOLD v2 deliver to us
Great work
Really original and cool project. I wish you winning on gamejam and luck in future development!
Oh, fooled me to actually tryna craft one
I executed the following:
And then went to craft. Good job, nothing.
Nice game
The game is fun to play and I never felt like I was lost or confused when going through it, I think the worst thing I could say about it is that I forgot who the characters were when they reappeared later in the story (which is not really an issue, I think I managed to figure out who they were).
Does what it says it does, except there's nothing to do
You can truly embrace and discover air like you never have before. What's there not to like, I guess?
This is a negative review simply because there is no gameplay, absolutely nothing to do but fall and enjoy air. Anyone who downloads this might be in for a major disappointment, because Air Game is a legendary title. Take the title 100% literally, and you understand now!
Also give this man bonus points for unexpectedness :-)
Bugged release. Made me think about gamification and conditioning
In Robot Operator, you sneak into a robotics facility in search of a purported highly advanced and dangerous robot. What you find is a bunch of incredibly rudimentary robot puzzles, which you should ignore, and beeline straight to finding a dangerous one, then exiting with it.
However what I found myself doing was visiting each robot space and completing its puzzle, even though all I should have done is start each robot, and try to pick it up. One puzzle is even uncompletable, as there is not enough space for the number of commands that would be needed to complete it, which is very unsatisfying. This made me reflect on how I have been conditioned to completing objectives in games just because they are there.
Then there are the bugs and things that seem incomplete. You are briefed that the mission is highly dangerous, but all you will find are robot vacuums and little tank droids that won't damage you. I made sure I had creative mode off and damage on, but no damage, not even from stepping on them. The robots tend to get stuck in corners, too. There is something more dangerous than the robots though: falling into one of pits around the robot arenas, and never being able to escape. I assume that's why previous operators died on this mission and not the robots. The bigger problem though is that the robot that is the target has a bug where trying to pick it up with right-click will crash the game, which I had to fix to complete the game.
As with Nathan S.'s 2022 Jam, the visual art is pretty good, but there is not even a footstep sound and in fact the only sound I can recall is a little "whoosh" at the end. The game would really have benefitted from some sounds, which are easily available at places like Freesound.
Velvet crystal playthrough
i loved the story and the music keep up the great work
My life has been changed
Air air air
Very great mod, but unfortunately not for Mineclon(e2/ia)
I think it is cool, that the "Pizza Oven" has no graphical interface! I like the textures too.
Only 2 thinks:
Plearse answer! :)
Personally i think it is too heavy.
It looks promising, but unfortunately it doesn't load and apart from that, it is very heavy. I hope it can improve, since it seems to be of very good quality.
Error in bow
Bow not working on Android on mineclone2 0.85, minetest 5.8.0
Good system for players who dies often!
I think, it is a good idea, becaurse if players die, the stuff of them will despawn very fast, and when (he/she) can not find the die-place so fast, the stuff is away for ever. A little tip: In the textures folder is the texture "mcl_formspec_itemslot.png" that is for the chest-slots. You can use the Itemslot-textures, of the Mineclone game (for example: "mcl_formspec_itemslot.png"). Then you save storage space. Much success with your mod!
It's good for survival, but it has a detail that makes it a little irritating.
I like this feature, as a decoration or useful for making bonemeal.
But in my opinion I think that the skeleton hitbox should be simpler, like a block; Since when you point at the skeleton it doesn't look very nice, it is also intricate to build with them. Because commonly I point to one of the faces but the block is placed anywhere else.
Postscript: The models are extremely well made, only the hitbox is the problem.
It's not the best game I have ever played but it's a good concept.
It could become something reallly, reaaalllly cool. But for now it's a boring clicker. And way too short. Thank you for the game.
This is awesome!
A great way to have a virtual society on a server.
Nagware, but it has an opt out
Random messages can be helpful if they push messages out to users who otherwise aren't aware of their content or are new and looking for hints. They quickly get old, boring, repetitive and tend to exacerbate the feeling of loneliness if the server is empty of other players, as you're reminded that you're playing multiplayer and not singleplayer.
I would give the mode a thumbs up if users could opt out. Now that the mod has been updated, I will recommend it to server admins. But personally I'm not a fan of random indiscriminate messaging, so I would opt out after playing on the server for a while.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.
I love the various biomes that mod adds
Lush caves, cursed lands, ocean flora and fauna its so great. Its nice to see more mods what adds biomes!
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!
This mod is very good
I like these monsters. They look disstressing and are quite powerful. Not sure why, they don't spawn on surface. Even though I edited the spawn.lua file.
A strange wonderful puzzle game spanning paradigms, and full of possibility
Nodecore will be many things to different players. The nodecore you're presented with when you play for the very first time is an open world take on a puzzle game. The experience invariably starts with "wow, I can't mine a tree with my bare hands? how am I meant to gain its powers?" Details aside, with diligence, you may come to find that you can indeed gain the tree's powers. Then the puzzles quickly open up, with many avenues you can explore... replenishing the earth. Harnessing fire. Delving for signs of ores. It becomes hard to call it a "puzzle game," yet it remains hard not to call it one.
You learn to interact with bits of the world and craft more stuff, little by little, and it paints an immersive big picture. There's an elegant minimalism, with nodes having a variety of uses, and many parallels in the recipes and interactions. As you tech up, you find more opportunities for optimization and process refinement, and similarities in different interactions allow you to get creative making infrastructure with multiple uses.
Nodecore's detractors will claim that the game is too hard to play as intended, and that it's not reasonable to expect someone to figure out the game's mysteries with only what it provides. Are they right? Well, sorta. Mostly yes. It depends on the player, really. But you don't have to play "as intended"! So by all means, you should give it a try, and if you get stuck, come ask the community. Nodecore players will generally give gentle hints at first, in the spirit of the puzzle. But if you get seriously frustrated, just be direct and honest about what aspects of the game you aren't enjoying, and request more direct information. The game opens up from exploration of mechanics to engineering with those mechanics, and it's valid to end up skipping the first step. Just try it first so you don't rob yourself of the chance to enjoy it. If you do skip to engineering gameplay, though, it stands out on its own.
Good for RP and Decoration
Not that good for survival because most drinks satiate the same as blueberries and take twice the inventory space (one for full glass bottles and one for empty ones) But still this mod is very well made, the models and textures are good, the bamboo trick is nice too, the models are great and now you can "eat" cactuces. If you want more food items just for the sake of it i recommend this mod.
science
Played this game for a while, enjoyed it overall. This game is about getting knowledge through experimenting and employing that knowledge to make stuff, pretty much the scientific method. Some puzzles are easier than other, for example I had no problems with fire, glass or the metal stuff, but I still haven't figured out leaching water through soil. The natural world is far from exciting so the game could get some improvements there, the only exploring I did was basically finding pumwater. Nevertheless the world is calm and soothing which is nice. That's not your typical Minecraft clone - you will need patience and a brain for this one.
Efficient and nice.
It works perfectly, and it's simple, i like it. Question, ¿Where is the 3D model from? I'm interesed in it.
I love this so much
My approval has approved this texture pack
Cool mod for pvp
Pvp need a refresh and this mod can do it well, but a bit laggy even on a good pc, resulting in fps drops, also the sound effect plays after 2 seconds. Maybe by reducing particles the lag go away? I'm not sure.
good golden tools
Thank you
Finally,
I can now make gold tools, but they are still not always usable
, because most people do not want to make a tool that will be destroyed in a short time
but is still good.
Finally
I was always wanting to see this cool af land, I suck at coding and someone making this splendid thing in mtg is commendable, I had plans for this but as I told earlier it could have taken a long way to get this thing done, but what you did is splendid, love it.
Finally craftable golden items 🎉😄🎉
I always wondered why the basic game doesn't provide crafting golden items by default considering that it provides gold ore blocks.
Easy way to de-clutter your inventory
Hope you have organized chests because if you dont finding where those items went is going to be a nuisance. But if you are organized then its great
I like the torch and the lamp
The lamp is nice too and easy to craft since the early game. You can make working chairs and tables for cheap too and they have nice models.
Dont worry anymore about spilling water
You can craft a stack and not have to worry about going back and forth to get water when making a farm. Its useful if you want to make floating farms with no base underneath the layer of earth or if you are using one of those mods that gives earth gravity and want to put it underneath the earth. Would be nice if it was compatible with wooden buckets but it still is an amazing and simple mod
Good modding base.
I use this to create basic mods.
Fun
I play this mod with my friends alot. Its very nice and polished :)
Makes tools feel hefty
Everytime i miss a block with my axe i feel like i could cause an accident with it, just like a real axe.
Awesome for testing mods (And games)
I tend to use this a lot for testing mods I create. I don't know what I would do without this!