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!
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!