The functions provided are mostly extremely useful and have practical applications in cleaning up griefed terrain, making buildings (and even 3D mazes!!), filling caves, adding a type of tree to a pre-existing biome, and much more. Unfortunately, a few crashes/bugs still exist, but this is an impressive mod with (hopefully) a bright future - Kudos to sbrl!
A neat little adventure with an open ending. The texturing work is really realistic and detailed. The story is engaging, and the overwhelming silence gives an ominous feeling throughout: the choice to exclude most sounds and music works. I had fun solving the puzzles for the electricity.
The ending is not very rewarding, and repetition of the same journal entry in many different instances felt strange. The story felt unfinished, as well. Some text in the bridge terminals is cut off.
Generally, it's an immersive experience with impressive world-building. I recommend checking it out!
I would have liked to recommend this as an educational mini-game, but it prevented me; it does have educational potential, though. The ending was funny, with the trombone sound. The charger was neat! The mapgen is standard, but nice nonetheless, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome either, being over quickly if you don't dig down...
As I said, even though it teaches the geology of the Moon, the fact every single material you mine in eccess has to be placed again in the world leads someone who, to their dismay, committed the mistake of starting to dig downwards, to spend even more time at it; and for what? To be left angry at yourself for wasting said time lol.
I'll try this again when it receives some more content additions, for now I can't recommend it.
Standalone mod with similar functionality to xdecor's Ender Chest
Other than the particle effects (which are cool!) and recipe, this is a standalone copy of xdecor's Ender Chest. A lot of the code differs, but the functionality is the same. As a standalone mod, if you aren't using xdecor, this works pretty well.
That music! Make it stop! It feels weird to commit heinous crimes while tormented by those beats. xD Ahem, the game features a decently detailed city. It's complete chaos outside the spawn area. You can hurt your fellow inhabitants in gruesome ways.
You keep your loot upon death. I think the "secret" here is the "Xtreem" logo found on a building...
Now, the oppressive atmosphere failed to make an impact, because of the cheesy tunes. The rooms in some apartment complexes are very unfinished; you can also enter anybody's house, no brute-forcing or keys required (I guess this is excused by the chaos everywhere). Exiting and re-entering a world gives you more bombs, but also displays the story again. Watch out, because this game sets the "time_speed" setting in minetest.conf to "0"! The "cops:pig_spawner" node has no texture. Civilians don't react at all when hurt by the player. The extinguisher seems useless. The destruct-o-meter goes over its limit.
It's an experience that doesn't really offer much, because of its lack of stability and general direction.
Great texture pack for those who want to relive early minetest days! The Mese texture, in my opinion, is the most classic/iconic thing from these early textures.
Sadly, the styles of this texture pack seem to conflict quite a lot. Some of the textures are slightly modified from minetest_game textures, some of them are slightly modified from PixelPerfection, and some of them are from Isabella II. In general, it feels like a mess of existing textures.
This is one of my favorite packs because of the aesthetically pleasing style and the consistency throughout the pack. It also gives a very nostalgic minetest feel, in my opinion, because of the old-style textures. Give it a try :)
Yep, this game is definitely going to give you a good scare if you play it for a while! The atmosphere is top notch: you're able to hear the creepy movements of the enemies in the distance and the many ambience noises are played frequently, giving this game a spooky vibe. One of the spiders made me physically jump, because it flanked me when I was trying to spot it. D: There are many objects to interact with and some POIs to find. Even though there was no way to win, I still enjoyed trying my best to survive.
On the negative side, the quest goals aren't all available, so the game is unbeatable. I found one undefined item "ssp_base:moniter_screen"; the layout of rooms is also more that of a labyrinth than that one of a spaceship, IMO. The enemies spawn very frequently, so destroying spawners is always risky.
I wish this could have had a proper ending, but anyhow it gets a recommendation.
Got lost on the way to the protest, killed myself to escape
Insane Protestor greets you with a big load of content warning tags when you view it on ContentDB, and fair enough. It's an edgy kind of a game, but not really particularly so when you get down to it. You're first presented with a happy upbeat soundtrack, which plays throughout and provides a kind of sinister juxtaposition to the violence and destruction of the actual game. It definitely has a story, with pictures and all, though who you are ends up mattering little in the violence and destruction that follows.
Insane protestor seems to revolve around one core gameplay goal: fill the destruct-o-meter. Unfortunately, doing this won't actually achieve anything. Nor will dying cause a lose condition: you will just respawn in your apartment, destruct-o-meter still rising. You will soon end up pursuing other goals like trying to explore the city. That there's an item dupe if you reload the game doesn't matter so when victory is nonexistent anyway (perhaps there's a message in that fact). The city is somewhat lacklustre, but at least it has been filled with a good number of assets from a lot of mods. Thanks to Insane Protester I know know xdecor has a good toilet model, for instance, or there's a fire extinguisher mod.
Even disregarding the lack of a win condition, the game is just not smooth either. Buildings are mazes, and your speed sends you careening down every stairwell to take fall damage. There are many ways to crash the game by right-clicking nodes or the intro formspec. The combat is unsatifying because both weapons are bad: the pipe bomb always seems to damage you no matter how far you throw it, and the throwable firebomb doesn't seem to actually deal any damage.
Lacking good architecture, good code, good story beyond the introduction and good gameplay elements means I can only recommend Protest as a 5 minute thing you play just to be edgy for a bit and to see what stuff there is out there for Minetest in various mods.
Simplicity and variety of levels convinced me this is a good addition to the Game Jam of this year. Its gameplay is rewarding and well adapted to the interstellar space theme, while always being unforgiving to most errors. The atmosphere is relaxing, but I feel pushed forward by being allowed to see the levels ahead.
In level 5, when the structure nodes are introduced, a section is misleading you into thinking you'll be safe, leading you to the void instead, but I guess it's fine. The concept and textures might be considered basic by some, however I think it doesn't hurt the experience much. I didn't really find anything else to report on the negative side. :)
A great zen puzzle game to lose yourself into for a while, I can recommend it.
This mod adds gigantic caverns and many biomes that are truly very interesting to explore and mine in. The crystal stalactites and stalagmites are my favorite thing about this mod. If you want to get to the top of any cave: it's going to take a while without fly mode :) The large caverns also prove to be awesome for mob-implementation: smaller caverns are hard to navigate for most mobs.
For smaller caverns and even more biomes, check out Hume2's mod Underground Challenge.
These machines are fairly easy to figure out, and can be used to do almost anything: build complex walls, structures, mazes, roads, or railways, by building things with a delay or offset, dig uniquely shaped tunnels underground, cool lava or melt snow automatically, and a lot more.
In general, this is one of the most intuitive machine mods that I have seen, where the user has incredible control over the machine they build.
One shortcoming is that the digtron inventory ejector is extremely laggy, and it's not clear how it can be dramatically optimized. Using pipeworks injectors for emptying the digtron inventory storages ends up being much nicer and reliable.
A medieval-themed mod with a nice selection of stuff to build with. This has been used in countless servers by now and can be used to produce beautiful buildings.
There are a few complaints: For people that are used to working with the circular saw or mymillwork, the lack of interior corners on Sokomine's roof nodes can come as a dissapointment. Additionally, the anvil has several bugs (including a crash you can get quite often), and you can get the HUD element stuck on your HUD permanently (until you relog) if you try hard enough.
This is one of the best building extensions I have seen, the shapes fit together wonderfully and are a great look on any build! This mod is also ancient and does not support a lot of mods, so I would reccomend that you add new materials with mymillwork.register(itemstring) in materials.lua.
I got wrecked... but the gameplay is well paced and fun. The assistant is cool and helpful, I only wish it was equipped with a torch, too ahah. The soundtrack is nice and varied, there is voiceover for the robot and powerful abilities in your arsenal, to boot! You can turn defensive nodes into their reinforced counterpart, and even repair damaged ones. The enemies will keep you on your toes and you should use your time wisely to prepare for their arrival.
On first playthrough, I was able to acquire the meteors without issue before night fell and thus win, so I was a bit confused; then I waited a bit the second time and the aliens proved tough to beat, maybe too tough if playing alone (I never actually fought them off successfully, due to time constraints). I only found a warning for a missing texture, it's pretty stable.
Overall, I found this mini-game very original and polished, I can recommend it if played with your friends.
I am impressed by the functionality and mechanics the author was able to include here, but even when put together they don't offer a complete experience yet, for a game. The ships, including your own, are procedurally generated, and they all have functional, vital components for gravity, shields, comms, etc. There are even visitors that pop up, warning you in chat if they are just patrolling, looking to trade or are hostile. If you try to leave your ship and dig others, you are stopped. You are able to rearrange the ship as you please.
With that said, the gameplay isn't there yet, and sadly this lacks a clear direction. AFAIK interacttions with other ships are limited to simply hailing you when they arrive. There is a crafting element, but some materials aren't obtainable, I think. The oxygen mechanic isn't implemented yet. There are no sounds. You can drop your tools in the void, losing them forever.
There isn't much to get from this in its current state, but it already has a decent foundation to build upon. I hope to see this game expanded post-Jam.
This is a pretty short mini-game, but it's semi-complete and the story was funny. The ship GUI is standard, but features a lot of elements (not all functional), one of these being a self-updating log to understand your current mission. I liked that the textures for the asteroids were all a bit different, they weren't just a different color. The music was spacey.
As I said, some of the ship functionality is not implemented, and can actually hurt your progress if you're not careful. The story was interesting enough, even though the game ended pretty quickly. The ship tends to obstruct the view when looking downwards, while inside it.
I like space plots, so this one was right up my alley. Recommended ;)
and name Sabrina D 'till page 54(Unidentified Czech Female Reactor (Non-Blonde Form)) there are skins without faces.
Need to manually edit png's, delete white squares to make them transparent to return their heads.
I agree with what others have said: this game really does atmosphere well, both on the surface with the view of the planet and inside the caves. The pixel art in the opening and menus is very clean too. The thematic music is a very nice touch. It would be great to see fleshed out beyond its Game Jam state. Spiralling Down could be Minetest's answer to Deep Rock Galatic.
That being said, it's not finished enough to recommend spending a great deal of time in right now. The menu screen isn't really very intitutive, it's not clear what the various elements you're collecting are or do, or what the tools are (it would be helpful if the HUD showed a descriptive name for the selected tool). Though I said I like the music, it's way too loud by default and there really could be more emphasis on sound effects, especially for drilling and such. Music transitions are a bit abrupt when moving between areas. I also got some errors related to sounds when using the acid gun (didn't know how to use it either). There were some plants that were kind of floating a few blocks off the ground that looked like they should be hanging from the ceiling. It would be good if you could pick up the lights again. The bat monsters could use some work, they're a bit laggy for me and totally overwhelming. The weird green balls also look a bit rough and clutter everything up. The game could introduce you to the hostiles in a bit more of a staggered fashion - perhaps only a handful at first, then more of them and more dangerous foes the deeper you go.
I am taking the time to give feedback here because I think the bones we have here are promising and it could be a fun game with more development.
I had a blast with this game... when it worked. I played on 5.5.1 to have the compass work, and I have to say this concept is really fun and clever to me! Coupled with its many riddles and puzzles, this is a novel experience that I hope will see more polish going forward. The way the rooms change layout is smooth, and each one can be entered from different directions (nice touch).
The riddles were pretty hard to figure out on my own, I had to resort to asking for solutions and ultimately giving up, oof. I think the main menu music is too loud compared to the in-game sound.
I recommend this since I had fun, but the experience was soured by the crashes. Definitely check it out post-Jam!
Man future government suuucks! This adventure game has a varied soundtrack, a cool story and much to discover. I liked the artstyle of the initial briefing, and it was simply fun running through the many caves and caverns, blasting a few of the powerful aliens with acid while collecting resources. The mech model looks nice, I only wish it had animations. The beacon system is well integrated and easy to track.
I believe that the music in the ice layer could be more varied, as you're bound to spend more time in there to stockpile supplies for the danger ahead. I couldn't complete the game because the enemies simply frightened me too much: when I poked my head in a cave close to their spawn depth, a swarm of 10~ of them attacked me and caused me to flee. When I tried to fight them, they always overwhelmed me with numbers because of their fast spawn rate.
Overall though, this is a recommendation because it felt polished where it counted, albeit being really difficult at times.
This is the first Game Jam game I played this year, and I have to say, as 'simple' as the concept is, it was a very enjoyable experience. There was no need for lots of introductory text or explanations - the gameplay was very intuitive and the pacing was great. There was parts where I thought I was stuck but then kind of naturally figured it out. I especially found the hand prints that display on the blocks a nice touch. The atmosphere was very chill and spacey thanks to the music and sparce use of sound effects (only from moving blocks or teleporting). The textures were nice, as was the use of image backgrounds. While the gameplay was a lot simpler than Glitch, I actually didn't lose my patience with this and managed to clear the whole thing.
There wasn't much content to the game, but in its defence, everything that was there was very nicely polished. The rooms were interestingly arranged and the atmosphere really worked with the theme. Some of the textures could use a tiny bit of fine tuning perhaps (I found the textures at the crash site/opening kind of jarring and unharmonious, maybe they clash with each other or the background), but the space station areas looked great.
I'd like to see more of Klots and would definitely hop back in to play more levels.
OVERVIEW - The secret story of spacetravel
The gameplay in this game was a bit repetitive, and the lack of sounds didn't help.
This game was for me, was right between a thumbs up or thumbs down, but in the end, I'm giving it a thumbs up.
What really was this game's saving grace, was how well Nathan used all of this year's game jam themes.
The storyline was pretty good, the game was obviously a space game, and there was a hint on secrets in the game.
The ending was a bit forced, and pretty easy to get too.
I think really one of the biggest things this game needs, is some sounds.
But besides that, good job.
RATING SYSTEM:
1 - Not a fan
2 - Meh
3 - Okay
4 - Good
5 - Love it!
I enjoyed poking at the klots to understand their otherworldy secrets, and succeded! The game features a soothing tune that will accompany your puzzle solving, enough levels to understand all its mechanics and neat looking nodes across all its levels; oh and the cool background!
I experienced some rubberbanding with movements, but it wasn't too distracting. Of course, more levels are going to be a nice addition.
I recommend this to anyone who likes mini-games that make you chill and ponder solutions.
It's a pity this game didn't get the polish it needed. The alien-style GUI looks interesting, even if unfinished, and the worms have detailed textures.
However, the only "interaction" possible seems to be raising the ground, and many textures are missing. The worms only have two animations; they also get stuck if the ground is raised at their position.
Let's wait and see what this becomes; I can't recommend this as it's lacking both in gameplay and stability.
The way unified_inventory does things makes it a joy to work with for developers, while more modern inventories like i3 are flashy, but do not support as much and are harder to work with. Registerable buttons and fairly easy configuration make this mod very flexible, and add-ons like Unified Inventory Plus make crafting a charm.
As for criticism, Unified Inventory desperately needs a better sorting system, although VanessaE's newest one is pretty good - but it needs a bit larger support. A more modern look might also help a lot. Also, UI does not come with a good skins mod out of the box, you need to install something like u_skins to get a nice selection of skins.
You mine 5 meterorites, that's it (game is probably still WIP)
Overall result
I'm sorry, but no recommendation, this is way too incomplete, too little gameplay. This looks like a prototype tho, so I'm still interested to see where this game will go in the future, if it is continued post-jam, because I'm kinda curious about the concept.
Gameplay
Sadly, there is not much you can do yet. Probably this is another prototype for the game jam. Your main mission is to collect 5 asteroids with the "power hammer" tool and then you win. :-( And you basically just have to wait until they randomly drop from the sky. The mapgen is also very, very simple and mostly, although the MASSIVE ravines look really cool. I was promised an alien fight but even after 3 playthroughs I never encountered them. (?????) I like that you have a companion, the C.O.M.P. Unit. This reminds me of some really old-school sci-fi stories. There are special abilities you can use with your two tools, but what use do they have if there is nothing to fight? :(
Graphics
I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting art style and use of contrast which sets the world apart from default Minetest Game textures. The game logo could still do some work tho.
Sounds
This one had a surprise: It has speech output for your companion "C.O.M.P.". And the music seems to be composed and created by the author as well. Very nice! Even if the music is a bit simple, I really like that someone made music for the game specifically for the game jam.
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. It greets me with an harmless error message about missing river water, but not real bugs. I had no performance problems on a >10y computer. 60 FPS effortlessly.
Absolutely no recommendation as a game. This is just too boring even as a tamagotchi. It is probably WIP/incomplete anyway. At this stage, it might serve as a screensaver at best.
"Gameplay"
This is a very early prototype, so there is very little of what you could call "gameplay". You mostly just watch forms slide around on an orange asteroid, that's it. You can raise the ground at certain places and add new space worms with a maximum of 3. That's it. You can't even undo the raising of land, that's how incomplete this is. It gets boring instantly, sorry. First, this is not a game, as there is no gameplay. It is more like a tamagotchi. That alone isn't a problem, but even as a tamagotchi is has nothing to offer since you just can't do anything. And if all you can do with the worms is just watch, you can hardly call it a game.
It's still interesting to see new concepts being tried out in Minetest. I believe something like Adopt a Space Worm! was never even tried before, so I give a few points for the idea. :P
Unfortunately feels to incomplete, the lack of sounds is disturbing
Overall rating
No recommendation, because the gameplay experience is still bland due to incompleteness. A lot more work is needed, but it's a start. To players I advice to just wait until the complete game gets released. Currently, this is mostly feels like an early demo version. I think the size of the map was ultimately this game's downfall, the author made the map WAY too big and then was unable to create a complete (or even semi-complete) experience within the time frame. I still appreciate the work that has been put into this MASSIVE map already, I think I should check out this game again if a post-jam version is planned. Although the game got no recommendation, I do NOT say it's worthless. I would love to see an actual polished adventure/mystery-style game in MT.
Gameplay
First of all, this game might be the first attempt to create a non-trivial adventure/mystery-style game in Minetest ever (together with Piranesi, I guess). The attempt alone is cool, it's high time that Minetesters explore new genres. :-)
Sadly, the result ultimately falls flat IMO. You explore the various rooms and collect items and clues, except the only item that actually matters are the keycards that unlock new rooms. Oddly, the key cards just magically increase your security clearance by using them in mid air (not at a terminal)??? There are working computers which their own GUI, which is nice, but you can't do much with them yet. A minimal game functionality is available: You can open doors and close them and the security clearance is checked properly.
IMHO Best sound ambience of the 2022 Minetest Game Jam
Overall rating
I give this one a recommendation for the sound design ALONE, even if the game is lacking a bit in content and the goal is a GRIND to achieve. I hope this one will get expanded (and bugfixed) post-jam, I am looking forward for an update.
Gameplay
The gameplay is basically ... survive, I guess? You run in a seemingly endless expanse of metal rooms, except it's not rooms, it's walls in a chaotic pattern. This game must have been directly inspired by SCP stories from the Internet, I guess it's not a coincidence that the letters "SSP" are similar to "SCP". :-)
You constantly run throughout the rooms, hoping to find something new and punch to destroy objects like drawers, storage boxes. Most of the "rooms" look alike, but they are not identical, it's chaos. Normally I would find such things boring fast, but the ambience REALLY carries the game. I found two rare special structures: The engines with coal stacks inside, and a filter system. Apart from that, it's boxes, computers, drawers and some random electronics.
The game tells you very little about what happens, you have to figure (most) things on your own, but this adds to the mystery. You get hungry fast, but there are plenty of food boxes, but you still need to restock constantly, so you need to explore further. I think the game still needs to add a few more special structures to be not monotonous, however, the endless repeating halls still have something spooky ...
Unique experience, but unstable and feels incomplete
Overall rating
First of all, even if this game is incomplete, this game demonstrates greatly how games can be a form of artistic expression. This game is clearly a very special and unique submission for tha game jam. I like that a lot! But I still have to give a "No recommendation" due to massive performance problems. This is a shame, as the game is otherwise something really special, I really hope the problems will be fixed and the game will continued to be worked on post-jam, it 100% has HUGE potential. I am looking forward for a post-jam version of this game. It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, even if not every submission passes the park.
Gameplay
This is unique, yet familiar. It takes on the "mining" genre with a twist. The custom mapgen definitely is a huge plus for this game. Your goal is to go deeper and deeper.
The mapgen is good, you will be able to go down relatively easy, don't have to backtrack often and frequently find large cavities. What's unique are the ores, which might come in high and low quantities. Alien plants grow on the floor and ceiling.
You collect resources while venturing down and have to evade ... aliens?
This game should actually be called "Speedrunning Down" because that's the winning strategy. :D My winning strategy is to first stockpile enough saturnium and steel on the high and safe layers, and then YOLO downwards as fast as I can, not even trying to fight the enemies. When I get hit, I briefly heal my self, then continue to speedrun downwards. I also try to avoid large caves due to the enormous amount of enemies.
Maybe it would be better if the game had some other method to prevent the player to venture down too fast.
What was confusing is the game tells you to go to a spot on your radar but I did that and found ... nothing. Strange. Probably this wasn't coded yet?
Must-have if you use WorldEdit a lot!
The functions provided are mostly extremely useful and have practical applications in cleaning up griefed terrain, making buildings (and even 3D mazes!!), filling caves, adding a type of tree to a pre-existing biome, and much more. Unfortunately, a few crashes/bugs still exist, but this is an impressive mod with (hopefully) a bright future - Kudos to sbrl!
Intrigue on the spaceship
A neat little adventure with an open ending. The texturing work is really realistic and detailed. The story is engaging, and the overwhelming silence gives an ominous feeling throughout: the choice to exclude most sounds and music works. I had fun solving the puzzles for the electricity.
The ending is not very rewarding, and repetition of the same journal entry in many different instances felt strange. The story felt unfinished, as well. Some text in the bridge terminals is cut off.
Generally, it's an immersive experience with impressive world-building. I recommend checking it out!
Sometimes a bin goes a long way
I would have liked to recommend this as an educational mini-game, but it prevented me; it does have educational potential, though. The ending was funny, with the trombone sound. The charger was neat! The mapgen is standard, but nice nonetheless, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome either, being over quickly if you don't dig down...
As I said, even though it teaches the geology of the Moon, the fact every single material you mine in eccess has to be placed again in the world leads someone who, to their dismay, committed the mistake of starting to dig downwards, to spend even more time at it; and for what? To be left angry at yourself for wasting said time lol.
I'll try this again when it receives some more content additions, for now I can't recommend it.
v (More in the comments) v
Standalone mod with similar functionality to xdecor's Ender Chest
Other than the particle effects (which are cool!) and recipe, this is a standalone copy of xdecor's Ender Chest. A lot of the code differs, but the functionality is the same. As a standalone mod, if you aren't using xdecor, this works pretty well.
Now I know why he is insane...
That music! Make it stop! It feels weird to commit heinous crimes while tormented by those beats. xD Ahem, the game features a decently detailed city. It's complete chaos outside the spawn area. You can hurt your fellow inhabitants in gruesome ways. You keep your loot upon death. I think the "secret" here is the "Xtreem" logo found on a building...
Now, the oppressive atmosphere failed to make an impact, because of the cheesy tunes. The rooms in some apartment complexes are very unfinished; you can also enter anybody's house, no brute-forcing or keys required (I guess this is excused by the chaos everywhere). Exiting and re-entering a world gives you more bombs, but also displays the story again. Watch out, because this game sets the "time_speed" setting in minetest.conf to "0"! The "cops:pig_spawner" node has no texture. Civilians don't react at all when hurt by the player. The extinguisher seems useless. The destruct-o-meter goes over its limit.
It's an experience that doesn't really offer much, because of its lack of stability and general direction.
v (More in the comments) v
Only a handful of textures included
Currently, on 11 textures are included. The textures are also in a highly conflicting style, sadly. This is not a usable pack yet. :(
The nostalgia
Great texture pack for those who want to relive early minetest days! The Mese texture, in my opinion, is the most classic/iconic thing from these early textures.
Remix of some other texture packs
Sadly, the styles of this texture pack seem to conflict quite a lot. Some of the textures are slightly modified from minetest_game textures, some of them are slightly modified from PixelPerfection, and some of them are from Isabella II. In general, it feels like a mess of existing textures.
Excellent artistry by Gambit & renovation by jp
This is one of my favorite packs because of the aesthetically pleasing style and the consistency throughout the pack. It also gives a very nostalgic minetest feel, in my opinion, because of the old-style textures. Give it a try :)
Survival focused and unsettling
Yep, this game is definitely going to give you a good scare if you play it for a while! The atmosphere is top notch: you're able to hear the creepy movements of the enemies in the distance and the many ambience noises are played frequently, giving this game a spooky vibe. One of the spiders made me physically jump, because it flanked me when I was trying to spot it. D: There are many objects to interact with and some POIs to find. Even though there was no way to win, I still enjoyed trying my best to survive.
On the negative side, the quest goals aren't all available, so the game is unbeatable. I found one undefined item "ssp_base:moniter_screen"; the layout of rooms is also more that of a labyrinth than that one of a spaceship, IMO. The enemies spawn very frequently, so destroying spawners is always risky.
I wish this could have had a proper ending, but anyhow it gets a recommendation.
v (More in the comments) v
Got lost on the way to the protest, killed myself to escape
Insane Protestor greets you with a big load of content warning tags when you view it on ContentDB, and fair enough. It's an edgy kind of a game, but not really particularly so when you get down to it. You're first presented with a happy upbeat soundtrack, which plays throughout and provides a kind of sinister juxtaposition to the violence and destruction of the actual game. It definitely has a story, with pictures and all, though who you are ends up mattering little in the violence and destruction that follows.
Insane protestor seems to revolve around one core gameplay goal: fill the destruct-o-meter. Unfortunately, doing this won't actually achieve anything. Nor will dying cause a lose condition: you will just respawn in your apartment, destruct-o-meter still rising. You will soon end up pursuing other goals like trying to explore the city. That there's an item dupe if you reload the game doesn't matter so when victory is nonexistent anyway (perhaps there's a message in that fact). The city is somewhat lacklustre, but at least it has been filled with a good number of assets from a lot of mods. Thanks to Insane Protester I know know xdecor has a good toilet model, for instance, or there's a fire extinguisher mod.
Even disregarding the lack of a win condition, the game is just not smooth either. Buildings are mazes, and your speed sends you careening down every stairwell to take fall damage. There are many ways to crash the game by right-clicking nodes or the intro formspec. The combat is unsatifying because both weapons are bad: the pipe bomb always seems to damage you no matter how far you throw it, and the throwable firebomb doesn't seem to actually deal any damage.
Lacking good architecture, good code, good story beyond the introduction and good gameplay elements means I can only recommend Protest as a 5 minute thing you play just to be edgy for a bit and to see what stuff there is out there for Minetest in various mods.
Rewarding puzzle solver
Simplicity and variety of levels convinced me this is a good addition to the Game Jam of this year. Its gameplay is rewarding and well adapted to the interstellar space theme, while always being unforgiving to most errors. The atmosphere is relaxing, but I feel pushed forward by being allowed to see the levels ahead.
In level 5, when the structure nodes are introduced, a section is misleading you into thinking you'll be safe, leading you to the void instead, but I guess it's fine. The concept and textures might be considered basic by some, however I think it doesn't hurt the experience much. I didn't really find anything else to report on the negative side. :)
A great zen puzzle game to lose yourself into for a while, I can recommend it.
Great for exploration and mob-implementation
This mod adds gigantic caverns and many biomes that are truly very interesting to explore and mine in. The crystal stalactites and stalagmites are my favorite thing about this mod. If you want to get to the top of any cave: it's going to take a while without fly mode :) The large caverns also prove to be awesome for mob-implementation: smaller caverns are hard to navigate for most mobs.
For smaller caverns and even more biomes, check out Hume2's mod Underground Challenge.
Logical mod that can be used to build or mine
These machines are fairly easy to figure out, and can be used to do almost anything: build complex walls, structures, mazes, roads, or railways, by building things with a delay or offset, dig uniquely shaped tunnels underground, cool lava or melt snow automatically, and a lot more. In general, this is one of the most intuitive machine mods that I have seen, where the user has incredible control over the machine they build.
One shortcoming is that the digtron inventory ejector is extremely laggy, and it's not clear how it can be dramatically optimized. Using pipeworks injectors for emptying the digtron inventory storages ends up being much nicer and reliable.
Nice game but needs some more interesting gameplay
Pretty cool design and GUI!!
One of Sokomine's greatest works
A medieval-themed mod with a nice selection of stuff to build with. This has been used in countless servers by now and can be used to produce beautiful buildings.
There are a few complaints: For people that are used to working with the circular saw or mymillwork, the lack of interior corners on Sokomine's roof nodes can come as a dissapointment. Additionally, the anvil has several bugs (including a crash you can get quite often), and you can get the HUD element stuck on your HUD permanently (until you relog) if you try hard enough.
good job!
It is boring but the mechanics are insane!
An incredible, severely underrated mod
This is one of the best building extensions I have seen, the shapes fit together wonderfully and are a great look on any build! This mod is also ancient and does not support a lot of mods, so I would reccomend that you add new materials with
mymillwork.register(itemstring)inmaterials.lua.Trash
I dont know how to play it! its not clear imo!
Pretty cool game but needs some additional features!
soundtrack 7/10 gameplay 7.5/10 story 10/10
Very useful for my purposes!
Although the automatic line-break would be the perfect addition for this mod.
Engaging base defense game
I got wrecked... but the gameplay is well paced and fun. The assistant is cool and helpful, I only wish it was equipped with a torch, too ahah. The soundtrack is nice and varied, there is voiceover for the robot and powerful abilities in your arsenal, to boot! You can turn defensive nodes into their reinforced counterpart, and even repair damaged ones. The enemies will keep you on your toes and you should use your time wisely to prepare for their arrival.
On first playthrough, I was able to acquire the meteors without issue before night fell and thus win, so I was a bit confused; then I waited a bit the second time and the aliens proved tough to beat, maybe too tough if playing alone (I never actually fought them off successfully, due to time constraints). I only found a warning for a missing texture, it's pretty stable.
Overall, I found this mini-game very original and polished, I can recommend it if played with your friends.
Unfinished, unfortunately
I am impressed by the functionality and mechanics the author was able to include here, but even when put together they don't offer a complete experience yet, for a game. The ships, including your own, are procedurally generated, and they all have functional, vital components for gravity, shields, comms, etc. There are even visitors that pop up, warning you in chat if they are just patrolling, looking to trade or are hostile. If you try to leave your ship and dig others, you are stopped. You are able to rearrange the ship as you please.
With that said, the gameplay isn't there yet, and sadly this lacks a clear direction. AFAIK interacttions with other ships are limited to simply hailing you when they arrive. There is a crafting element, but some materials aren't obtainable, I think. The oxygen mechanic isn't implemented yet. There are no sounds. You can drop your tools in the void, losing them forever.
There isn't much to get from this in its current state, but it already has a decent foundation to build upon. I hope to see this game expanded post-Jam.
Relaxing little adventure
This is a pretty short mini-game, but it's semi-complete and the story was funny. The ship GUI is standard, but features a lot of elements (not all functional), one of these being a self-updating log to understand your current mission. I liked that the textures for the asteroids were all a bit different, they weren't just a different color. The music was spacey.
As I said, some of the ship functionality is not implemented, and can actually hurt your progress if you're not careful. The story was interesting enough, even though the game ended pretty quickly. The ship tends to obstruct the view when looking downwards, while inside it.
I like space plots, so this one was right up my alley. Recommended ;)
Starting from page 48
and name Sabrina D 'till page 54(Unidentified Czech Female Reactor (Non-Blonde Form)) there are skins without faces. Need to manually edit png's, delete white squares to make them transparent to return their heads.
Atmospheric but a bit rough around the edges in its current form
Rating Scale:
1-10 for each of the 6 categories, 1 being a thumbs down, 10 being a thumbs up. Max total being 60.
Gameplay: 6 | Innovation: 8 | Graphics (Content): 7 | Music & Sound (Content): 7 | Theme: 10 | Stability: 8 |
Total: 46
I agree with what others have said: this game really does atmosphere well, both on the surface with the view of the planet and inside the caves. The pixel art in the opening and menus is very clean too. The thematic music is a very nice touch. It would be great to see fleshed out beyond its Game Jam state. Spiralling Down could be Minetest's answer to Deep Rock Galatic.
That being said, it's not finished enough to recommend spending a great deal of time in right now. The menu screen isn't really very intitutive, it's not clear what the various elements you're collecting are or do, or what the tools are (it would be helpful if the HUD showed a descriptive name for the selected tool). Though I said I like the music, it's way too loud by default and there really could be more emphasis on sound effects, especially for drilling and such. Music transitions are a bit abrupt when moving between areas. I also got some errors related to sounds when using the acid gun (didn't know how to use it either). There were some plants that were kind of floating a few blocks off the ground that looked like they should be hanging from the ceiling. It would be good if you could pick up the lights again. The bat monsters could use some work, they're a bit laggy for me and totally overwhelming. The weird green balls also look a bit rough and clutter everything up. The game could introduce you to the hostiles in a bit more of a staggered fashion - perhaps only a handful at first, then more of them and more dangerous foes the deeper you go.
I am taking the time to give feedback here because I think the bones we have here are promising and it could be a fun game with more development.
Very engaging, but a crash is around any corner
I had a blast with this game... when it worked. I played on 5.5.1 to have the compass work, and I have to say this concept is really fun and clever to me! Coupled with its many riddles and puzzles, this is a novel experience that I hope will see more polish going forward. The way the rooms change layout is smooth, and each one can be entered from different directions (nice touch).
The riddles were pretty hard to figure out on my own, I had to resort to asking for solutions and ultimately giving up, oof. I think the main menu music is too loud compared to the in-game sound.
I recommend this since I had fun, but the experience was soured by the crashes. Definitely check it out post-Jam!
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Fight or flight, the game
Man future government suuucks! This adventure game has a varied soundtrack, a cool story and much to discover. I liked the artstyle of the initial briefing, and it was simply fun running through the many caves and caverns, blasting a few of the powerful aliens with acid while collecting resources. The mech model looks nice, I only wish it had animations. The beacon system is well integrated and easy to track.
I believe that the music in the ice layer could be more varied, as you're bound to spend more time in there to stockpile supplies for the danger ahead. I couldn't complete the game because the enemies simply frightened me too much: when I poked my head in a cave close to their spawn depth, a swarm of 10~ of them attacked me and caused me to flee. When I tried to fight them, they always overwhelmed me with numbers because of their fast spawn rate.
Overall though, this is a recommendation because it felt polished where it counted, albeit being really difficult at times.
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Satsifying, short spacey puzzler with a meditative feel
Rating Scale:
1-10 for each of the 6 categories, 1 being a thumbs down, 10 being a thumbs up. Max total being 60.
Gameplay: 8 | Innovation: 8 | Graphics (Content): 7 | Music & Sound (Content): 10 | Theme: 9 | Stability: 10 |
Total: 52
This is the first Game Jam game I played this year, and I have to say, as 'simple' as the concept is, it was a very enjoyable experience. There was no need for lots of introductory text or explanations - the gameplay was very intuitive and the pacing was great. There was parts where I thought I was stuck but then kind of naturally figured it out. I especially found the hand prints that display on the blocks a nice touch. The atmosphere was very chill and spacey thanks to the music and sparce use of sound effects (only from moving blocks or teleporting). The textures were nice, as was the use of image backgrounds. While the gameplay was a lot simpler than Glitch, I actually didn't lose my patience with this and managed to clear the whole thing.
There wasn't much content to the game, but in its defence, everything that was there was very nicely polished. The rooms were interestingly arranged and the atmosphere really worked with the theme. Some of the textures could use a tiny bit of fine tuning perhaps (I found the textures at the crash site/opening kind of jarring and unharmonious, maybe they clash with each other or the background), but the space station areas looked great.
I'd like to see more of Klots and would definitely hop back in to play more levels.
Lack of gameplay, but good storyline
OVERVIEW - The secret story of spacetravel The gameplay in this game was a bit repetitive, and the lack of sounds didn't help. This game was for me, was right between a thumbs up or thumbs down, but in the end, I'm giving it a thumbs up. What really was this game's saving grace, was how well Nathan used all of this year's game jam themes. The storyline was pretty good, the game was obviously a space game, and there was a hint on secrets in the game. The ending was a bit forced, and pretty easy to get too. I think really one of the biggest things this game needs, is some sounds. But besides that, good job.
RATING SYSTEM:
1 - Not a fan 2 - Meh 3 - Okay 4 - Good 5 - Love it!
GAMEPLAY - 3
GRAPHICS - 3
PLAYER-FRIENDLY - 3
PERFORMANCE - 5
SOUNDS & MUSIC - 1
THEME - 5
TOTAL - 20/30(Good)
Poetic brainteaser
I enjoyed poking at the klots to understand their otherworldy secrets, and succeded! The game features a soothing tune that will accompany your puzzle solving, enough levels to understand all its mechanics and neat looking nodes across all its levels; oh and the cool background!
I experienced some rubberbanding with movements, but it wasn't too distracting. Of course, more levels are going to be a nice addition.
I recommend this to anyone who likes mini-games that make you chill and ponder solutions.
Unfinished, unfortunately
It's a pity this game didn't get the polish it needed. The alien-style GUI looks interesting, even if unfinished, and the worms have detailed textures.
However, the only "interaction" possible seems to be raising the ground, and many textures are missing. The worms only have two animations; they also get stuck if the ground is raised at their position.
Let's wait and see what this becomes; I can't recommend this as it's lacking both in gameplay and stability.
DISGUSTANG
This game and its sounds are disgusting.
Good job, I guess.
Also, it lags my pc with infinitely-spawning robocops.
Great mod!
Is there a possibility that the fire, ice, etc. created by the swords will disappear after a short time? So that the environment is not destroyed.
More flexibility than i3
The way unified_inventory does things makes it a joy to work with for developers, while more modern inventories like i3 are flashy, but do not support as much and are harder to work with. Registerable buttons and fairly easy configuration make this mod very flexible, and add-ons like Unified Inventory Plus make crafting a charm.
As for criticism, Unified Inventory desperately needs a better sorting system, although VanessaE's newest one is pretty good - but it needs a bit larger support. A more modern look might also help a lot. Also, UI does not come with a good skins mod out of the box, you need to install something like u_skins to get a nice selection of skins.
You mine 5 meterorites, that's it (game is probably still WIP)
Overall result
I'm sorry, but no recommendation, this is way too incomplete, too little gameplay. This looks like a prototype tho, so I'm still interested to see where this game will go in the future, if it is continued post-jam, because I'm kinda curious about the concept.
Gameplay
Sadly, there is not much you can do yet. Probably this is another prototype for the game jam. Your main mission is to collect 5 asteroids with the "power hammer" tool and then you win. :-( And you basically just have to wait until they randomly drop from the sky. The mapgen is also very, very simple and mostly, although the MASSIVE ravines look really cool. I was promised an alien fight but even after 3 playthroughs I never encountered them. (?????) I like that you have a companion, the C.O.M.P. Unit. This reminds me of some really old-school sci-fi stories. There are special abilities you can use with your two tools, but what use do they have if there is nothing to fight? :(
Graphics
I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting art style and use of contrast which sets the world apart from default Minetest Game textures. The game logo could still do some work tho.
Sounds
This one had a surprise: It has speech output for your companion "C.O.M.P.". And the music seems to be composed and created by the author as well. Very nice! Even if the music is a bit simple, I really like that someone made music for the game specifically for the game jam.
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. It greets me with an harmless error message about missing river water, but not real bugs. I had no performance problems on a >10y computer. 60 FPS effortlessly.
It's a glorified screensaver
Overall rating
Absolutely no recommendation as a game. This is just too boring even as a tamagotchi. It is probably WIP/incomplete anyway. At this stage, it might serve as a screensaver at best.
"Gameplay"
This is a very early prototype, so there is very little of what you could call "gameplay". You mostly just watch forms slide around on an orange asteroid, that's it. You can raise the ground at certain places and add new space worms with a maximum of 3. That's it. You can't even undo the raising of land, that's how incomplete this is. It gets boring instantly, sorry. First, this is not a game, as there is no gameplay. It is more like a tamagotchi. That alone isn't a problem, but even as a tamagotchi is has nothing to offer since you just can't do anything. And if all you can do with the worms is just watch, you can hardly call it a game.
It's still interesting to see new concepts being tried out in Minetest. I believe something like Adopt a Space Worm! was never even tried before, so I give a few points for the idea. :P
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Unfortunately feels to incomplete, the lack of sounds is disturbing
Overall rating
No recommendation, because the gameplay experience is still bland due to incompleteness. A lot more work is needed, but it's a start. To players I advice to just wait until the complete game gets released. Currently, this is mostly feels like an early demo version. I think the size of the map was ultimately this game's downfall, the author made the map WAY too big and then was unable to create a complete (or even semi-complete) experience within the time frame. I still appreciate the work that has been put into this MASSIVE map already, I think I should check out this game again if a post-jam version is planned. Although the game got no recommendation, I do NOT say it's worthless. I would love to see an actual polished adventure/mystery-style game in MT.
Gameplay
First of all, this game might be the first attempt to create a non-trivial adventure/mystery-style game in Minetest ever (together with Piranesi, I guess). The attempt alone is cool, it's high time that Minetesters explore new genres. :-)
Sadly, the result ultimately falls flat IMO. You explore the various rooms and collect items and clues, except the only item that actually matters are the keycards that unlock new rooms. Oddly, the key cards just magically increase your security clearance by using them in mid air (not at a terminal)??? There are working computers which their own GUI, which is nice, but you can't do much with them yet. A minimal game functionality is available: You can open doors and close them and the security clearance is checked properly.
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IMHO Best sound ambience of the 2022 Minetest Game Jam
Overall rating
I give this one a recommendation for the sound design ALONE, even if the game is lacking a bit in content and the goal is a GRIND to achieve. I hope this one will get expanded (and bugfixed) post-jam, I am looking forward for an update.
Gameplay
The gameplay is basically ... survive, I guess? You run in a seemingly endless expanse of metal rooms, except it's not rooms, it's walls in a chaotic pattern. This game must have been directly inspired by SCP stories from the Internet, I guess it's not a coincidence that the letters "SSP" are similar to "SCP". :-) You constantly run throughout the rooms, hoping to find something new and punch to destroy objects like drawers, storage boxes. Most of the "rooms" look alike, but they are not identical, it's chaos. Normally I would find such things boring fast, but the ambience REALLY carries the game. I found two rare special structures: The engines with coal stacks inside, and a filter system. Apart from that, it's boxes, computers, drawers and some random electronics.
The game tells you very little about what happens, you have to figure (most) things on your own, but this adds to the mystery. You get hungry fast, but there are plenty of food boxes, but you still need to restock constantly, so you need to explore further. I think the game still needs to add a few more special structures to be not monotonous, however, the endless repeating halls still have something spooky ...
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Unique experience, but unstable and feels incomplete
Overall rating
First of all, even if this game is incomplete, this game demonstrates greatly how games can be a form of artistic expression. This game is clearly a very special and unique submission for tha game jam. I like that a lot! But I still have to give a "No recommendation" due to massive performance problems. This is a shame, as the game is otherwise something really special, I really hope the problems will be fixed and the game will continued to be worked on post-jam, it 100% has HUGE potential. I am looking forward for a post-jam version of this game. It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, even if not every submission passes the park.
Gameplay
This is unique, yet familiar. It takes on the "mining" genre with a twist. The custom mapgen definitely is a huge plus for this game. Your goal is to go deeper and deeper. The mapgen is good, you will be able to go down relatively easy, don't have to backtrack often and frequently find large cavities. What's unique are the ores, which might come in high and low quantities. Alien plants grow on the floor and ceiling.
You collect resources while venturing down and have to evade ... aliens?
This game should actually be called "Speedrunning Down" because that's the winning strategy. :D My winning strategy is to first stockpile enough saturnium and steel on the high and safe layers, and then YOLO downwards as fast as I can, not even trying to fight the enemies. When I get hit, I briefly heal my self, then continue to speedrun downwards. I also try to avoid large caves due to the enormous amount of enemies. Maybe it would be better if the game had some other method to prevent the player to venture down too fast.
What was confusing is the game tells you to go to a spot on your radar but I did that and found ... nothing. Strange. Probably this wasn't coded yet?
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