3rd most helpful reviewer
This puts CalebJ in the top 0.2%
Packages
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3D Furniture by tony-ka
A lightweight mod which adds various home and bathroom furniture nodes, and some castle/medieval-themed nodes.
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Fireworks
Particle driven fireworks.
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Molten Sailor by Dokimi
Boat for sailing on lava, suit for diving in lava.
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Morebricks
Adds an assortment of new bricks to build with.
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Staffs
Staffs with various uses
THE current mod for painting/accenting nodes, but could be the gold standard
This is a fantastic mod if you're looking to paint some pixelart on your base wall, or accent a vine with some pretty artificial flowers - you name it, it's usually possible. The crafts are pretty easy and picking colors and painting away is a super pleasant experience. That said, there's some major ways this mod could be improved that are simply a must to make this the gold standard.
Currently there is no way to pick a color off of an existing canvas. When you're painting, you might select a paint and start painting away, then switch to another color and continue. If you forget the exact settings you used for that first paint, you're out of luck - because there's no color picker, and now you have to repaint that whole area with a similar color.(fixed by grorp, now you can use shift+right-click to pick a color off of a canvas!!)
Saving of the painting canvases is only done when the area is unloaded. This might sound fine, but imagine your world crashes while you're just about to finish your awesome painting that you spent the whole evening on (but you didn't leave/unload the area, you just stayed and painted). It won't be there when you relog(!!) -- and this is a problem some of my clients have had.
There's no way to move a canvas or a 'stamper' to move pixels slightly. Imagine you created a large painting centered above a fireplace in your base, only to find that the painting is one pixel off. You have to redraw the whole thing :(
It would be neat if you could export your drawings to a .png file, but this is not too important. Still, it would make this mod much more popular - why would you enter some dumb editor when you could just paint your texture natively? :D
Despite these issues, this mod is still definitely worth your time and there's simply nothing better in the painting mod club. Recommended, especially if you like pixel art :)
Interesting short playthrough, but leaves a lot of questions!
This game reminded me a bit of The secret story of Spacetravel by NathanS, a 2022 Game Jam entry. It's a spaceship-themed game where you have to find the cause of some issues in the spaceship, but ultimately, finding the cause and fixing the spaceship ends up being pretty easy and there isn't a whole lot of exploration to do. The best part is a small parkour near the end (with a few tough jumps!) to get to the final room. However, there is not much of a plot yet: I still don't know anything about myself, the spaceship's purpose, or my crewmates, before the game ends. There's also no purpose to fixing the spaceship because the game immediately ends, so I can't find out more things about the spaceship after fixing the engine, and I'm still not sure how I got in this spaceship!
Overall, it's just too short, it only took me about 8 minutes to solve. Because I wasn't in the game too long, the breathing sound didn't annoy me, it actually added to the ambience, but I could imagine it would after a while. A longer playing time and a more developed plot would be better, and perhaps, in the theme of SSS, using carefully positioned hints in the map instead of pop-up dialogues to make the experience more realistic and mysterious to the user.
Short dungeon-style puzzle with interesting characters -- much more to come?
Enjoyed this, one of the most polished games in the Jam this year! Only took me about an hour to solve overall, and the walking/exploring part was not boring at all for me - the curtains made it exciting and a bit nervewracking. When you boil it down, the plot isn't huge yet, but it's put together in a very strong way, so that you are invested in the characters and obviously want to know what is behind the dungeons. The 'puzzle' part of it isn't very complicated yet, I'd consider it more of a visual novel type game at the moment. It's evident that this game was influenced quite a bit by the short window for the Game Jam so I'm really looking forward to future progress and updates!
The character swapping in the finishing parts of the game was really very interesting and creative, making you the overseer of a collaboration. Ultimately, the ending scene was a bit underwhelming -- not the scene itself, which was extremely dramatic and impressive, but the fact that you are kind of at a loss for what to do next. You're teleported back into a hallway which you can't get out of, and what the boss just said to you looms over your head. You're stuck completely helpless with no way of finishing the story (yet). A better resolution would be great, hopefully defeating the evil and learning more about Vix's history somehow!
I also found it quite funny that the residents of this land are apparently so bored that they go for wild, dangerous adventures whenever rumors pop up on the surface. :)
If you're having trouble playing the game after the first scene (falling in darkness), do
/grantme teleportand/teleport 84 237 136(thank you to the author for giving me that clue). I had problems with that but didn't have any other problems playing the game after that. I'm sure this will be fixed after the game jam's concluding so I will maybe delete this part of my review later. :)Incredible FPS-style game, but very CPU demanding
First off-- WOW!!! Never seen anything like this in Minetest before, this is simply amazing. The weapons are pretty awesome and destructive, the sound effects are top-notch, and gameplay is typical for a FPS game - intense. As more and more of the buggers tunnel towards you, things seem to get more and more intense, as you try to navigate away from danger while also firing wildly. This is more than replayable and I would not be surprised at all if a popular multiplayer server pops up with this later. (it will need to be powerful though - see below!)
However, this game seems to have one big flaw (maybe the only flaw) -- CPU usage :-) My computer with 8GB of RAM and 4 cores just couldn't handle it and I crashed my computer three times trying to play this. Actions were delayed by like 10 seconds when I was playing, so I couldn't even tell that the guns were working and I took a good bit of time investigating the code to see if I was doing anything wrong. Luckily, my friend let me use his much more powerful computer and it was a completely different experience - the gameplay was incredible, and I didn't have any problems understanding the game or starting my attacks.
If you've got a CPU that can run this, this is easily the best game of the Jam this year. Thank you so much for yet another amazing game, Sumianvoice!
Immersive game with a great storyline!
A fantastic short playthrough, with a great storyline. My only wish is that it was a bit longer, it took me around 10 minutes to solve, and there weren't too many objectives to go through - maybe only 7-8. I have the feeling this could be speedrunned in 2-3 minutes, so it could definitely use some new content, but I still think it is fantastic, especially considering the time limits of the Game Jam this year.
The work that regulus has put into the atmosphere, textures, NPCs, and the music, is beautiful. It really immerses you in the environment and makes you truly want to solve the game. The objectives in the right-hand corner help you follow what you're supposed to do next. Nothing stumped me for too long and usually I knew exactly what to do, but it was still exciting because of the storyline and dialogue that kept me guessing. The animation after you win the game is spectacular -- by far it is one of the best animations I've ever seen in the game jam. This is probably going to end up as one of my favorite games because of how polished it is, but I still have a few other games to try. Thank you for a great game, regulus! :)
WIP game with promise, but currently unplayable
This is a space exploration game I guess, but it's hard to figure out what to do to start. You start the game in a small rocket, but you have to figure out that you can use the up/down keys to lower your rocket and explore, which I didn't understand and died a few times :-) Sadly, the rocket also threw me out of it and killed me several times, so there might be a problem with the attaching there.
Once you get out of the rocket and onto land, there's not a lot to do other than explore and perhaps make some makeshift tools and mine. But no real purpose other than that. That said, the rocket abilities are pretty cool and the game definitely shows promise. The biomes are cool too! A tier system where a player needs to work to have the materials needed to go to another planet might be cool, with the final planet offering some sort of interesting finish.
Clicker-like resource farming defense game
This is a resource farming game where the objective is to strengthen your base area so that it will survive eventual attacks. It's pretty easy if you are proactively playing & farming, but eventually your fortress will become self-sufficient when you get lots of NPCs and farming buildings, and your only job is to sit back and watch (and put down more buildings occasionally :D). Like all games of this type, once you've gotten everything and built your area to your satisfaction, you usually lose interest.
When I started the game, I wasn't really sure what to do. I clicked around and gained some resources but had no idea what to do with them. Eventually, I figured out that you have to place your base down to start storing the materials, but there should probably be some simple documentation to lead players in the right direction to start out. Surviving the waves of mobs isn't really hard if you're constantly gathering materials and increasing the security of your base. However, there are a few fairly major flaws in the game: firstly, some operations do not check if you have the required resources, so you can end up having negative materials. Additionally, you can remove your own base and lose the game - and what's more, it's a pretty large button on the formspec of your base, so it's pretty easy to accidentally click it and ruin your game. The NPCs occasionally get stuck on things but it wasn't too bad. The NathanS repairman NPC was pretty funny. I hired one of those guys just for the texture. Overall, a pretty interesting game, haven't seen a game like this in minetest before, and the gameplay doesn't have many bugs. Recommended for a short playthrough!
Too easy escape puzzle, with no clear directive or ending
You just need to escape the prison you're in, which ends up being super easy, just dig your way out like a madman once you figure out how to get the digger item. I escaped in about 2 minutes and most of that time was spent inspecting the premises. I also managed to walk through the item deletion barriers while keeping my items, and as said in the other reviews, if a cave generates in the right place when you make your world, you've got a get out of jail free card :)
Once you're out, it's a flat mapgen so you can hop on the grass forever and explore caves, but there's no formal ending and if you didn't read the game's description, I suspect you'll be left wondering what more there is to do or even what you were supposed to do in the first place. This game could really profit from being a more difficult escape, with more puzzle-like elements - it's just way too easy right now! A formal introduction and ending would also help a lot, because I was confused when I did not find any documentation in-game, and after escaping, there was no indicator that I had won. Hoping for future development/progress on this game!
Enchanting puzzle, but way overboard on the creepypasta
This is a super difficult puzzle (at least it was for me), the beginning levels are easy to train you, and then it gets harder from there - fast. The final levels are combinations of mazes, parkour, and discovery, all while making sure you don't get out of range of a good eye. You have infinite time and lives to complete a puzzle, so you just need to figure out the path and combination of buttons that will get you to the portal. Look around everywhere for hints and be very cautious - if you're quick about it, you can make a move forward and then backward to 'see' if you can proceed any further, without resetting. In some cases it's just quicker and easier to run around like a madman though, especially near the beginning of a puzzle. I really like the concept of this game, the last level with the tower was my favorite.
However, I think this game went too overboard on the creepypasta element: it's a lot like the backrooms in several levels, and the writing on the walls in various levels appear to be written in blood. Most rooms are very dark and combined with the music and the eyes, it's completely terrifying. It's flagged as "Gore" which I definitely think is appropriate but this still caught me by surprise. If that's your thing, this game is for you, I guess, but I turned off my music and adjusted my contrast to try to alleviate the mood immediately. Awesome puzzle though, recommended if you're not affected by creepypasta.
Very difficult but relaxing mind puzzle!!
Very difficult puzzle with regular checkpoints, I haven't finished it yet but I'm loving it -- this is super hard (for me at least) and is really fun to play - oddly relaxing. The whole thing is super simplistic and the sound effects match that theme. It's incredibly satisfying to get that white confetti stream and lock in the new checkpoint. The documentation is spot on and explains the game really well. Also, I was really relieved that progress is saved even though I exit the game. I'm going to be working on this one a while, probably, but I'm enjoying every second of it so far. Highly recommended if you like mind puzzles!
Short puzzle with an underwhelming boss
It's an interesting playthrough - unfortunately, the items hardly equip you for what you're supposed to do and the tips are a bit misleading (because the map is misdrawn, although this may be a creative touch by the author). Basically, you need to visit a particular location which will tell you where to go to find the boss, or just visit the location to begin with (there are no enforceable steps). Once you go through a few mazes, you arrive in the boss' underground chamber. The boss is super overpowered compared to you with your wimpy sword, but you can outrun him, so just gradually hit him as you run out of his grasp - once you know that, there's nothing to it. He does get a bit faster once he is low HP, but not fast enough to be a problem in my opinion. A potential exploit I found is that you can stay in your car once you get down to the boss, and he eventually destroys your car, but it seems like it damages his HP a lot - not sure. Unfortunately, I could hardly play the game because of the very heavy models, which tanked my fps like crazy. Granted, I'm on an older computer, but you should definitely have a decent GPU if you play this - there are some really neat models but they have way too many vertices for my GPU. Additionally, the textures are grainy and because the game uses numerous models, it gets super grainy along model edges, which is a bit hard on the eyes. A few textures are missing too, like the ones for the ancient tree.
IMO this should probably also be marked (content flags) as Gore, because the random body limbs strewn around the map are a bit shocking.
Funny, short dice game
Very simple game, but pretty fun to play a few times! It's like yahtzee - 90% luck and a little bit of skill thrown in to make it interesting. The strategies of the game itself are fairly simple - if you get anything other than a 1, the roll's value is added to your score. If you hit a 1, then you lose everything you gained on that turn, and you can pass your turn to avoid the 1 coming up. The computer (edited based on comments) is super smart, the author implemented one of the strongest strategies, so you have a less than 50% chance of winning even with ideal play, but somehow I got lucky and beat out the computer. I stuck with a strategy of doing 2-5 rolls at max and passing, and won on my first try. But the second time I played, the computer got off to a great start and I wasn't able to come back. Losing the game is quite terrifying, as the pigs suddenly turn on you and scream your headset out. Overall, a fun dice game, but probably needs just a bit more strategy to keep players interested for longer. :)
Fairly well-featured game base, but needs organization and trimming
If you were expecting a playable game, this will be quite the disappointment, but from the code side this is quite an interesting base game. It allows a fairly direct way to edit some of the core functions of minetest and provides a fairly flexible codebase to start an actual game with. That said, some of the textures included don't make a lot of sense being there (possible bloat which is generally not good for a game base), and the code isn't structured in a super accessible or logical way yet. Without opening each folder and trying to figure out what is contained, it's very difficult to find out how to edit things or use the game base. In this area, it could definitely use some extra work, probably in the form of more defined modules and better structured code for future modders / gamemakers.
Fantastic new shapes, but hard to use in an actual world
I'm a builder and these shapes are exactly what builders need, filling in some of the glaring holes that moreblocks left us with. But there's a catch - There are roughly 120 additional nodes that will be registered for every full node added to the circular saw using this mod. That adds up quick... Registering 100 nodes for the circular saw will already add 12,000 (+100) different nodes to your world, at which point you have to start thinking about minetest's hardcoded node limit. And builders tend to work with much more than 100 nodes :)
Frankly, Minetest needs better support for node shapes, either putting them in a new param (may increase world sizes) or un-hardcoding the node limit (also would increase world sizes), or some other method that tries to reduce the damage the change might cause. This mod does everything it should, and is super useful, but it will hardly get use in public servers currently (and local worlds) simply because of Minetest's node limits!
Quite consistent, good-looking 32x pack - fantasy themed?
The best 32x texture pack for Minetest currently, if you ask me. Wow! Sirrobzeroone has really found the magic of 32x, while keeping things altogether looking mostly consistent and visually appealing. It's not perfect, and there's definitely some "rough edges" in places, but it's shoulders higher than anything else other 32x packs I've seen have to offer. Plus, the list of supported mods is larger than probably any other texture pack currently, just to top it off. This deserves many more eyeballs than it is getting!
Very useful in multiplayer settings
Imagine showering a bride with rice, shooting confetti over a party, or even throwing hundreds of pies at a griefers face! All of that is feasibly possible with this mod, and in a clear-cut, easy-to-understand way.
This mod only improves when used in conjunction with mesecons: now you can detect for certain players before activating the particlespawner or make it only spawn particles when certain in-world objectives are achieved!
Less is more, when it comes to X-Decor
This is really a fantastic mod since Wuzzy took over on the development. At first look, it can come across as a oddly small collection of random decor blocks, but, as I have seen on servers, this actually takes care of most decor needs, and adds some awesome functionalities along with it. Less is more, I guess? The textures are consistent and fit minetest well, and everything actually works without random crashes (unlike the old version). Chess finally works, most importantly, and it looks and feels like an actual implementation. Wow!! Other than the fact that my opponent takes too long! Totally not hinting you to add timers... :-)
The more detailed decor mods, like Homedecor or Multidecor are too bloaty and the items will kill your FPS unless you've got a supercomputer and the latest NVIDIA graphics card (maybe slightly overexaggerated). This mod is lightweight and won't be hard on compromised clients. Recommended, especially for multiplayer situations!
The commonly used farming "solution" - but is it really a solution?
The diverse selection of crops in this mod, combined with a plethora of food items, keeps you entertained for quite a while. Not all of the crops are so easy to find, so some of them double as collector's items :-)
The texture style isn't top-notch or anything, but those textures have improved a lot in the past few years. There's a bigger problem though, which is simply that this mod doesn't have enough uses for it's items. Many of the crops only have a single usage, or some even have absolutely no usages, at the time of writing. For many users of the mod, there is absolutely no mechanic to encourage them to farm new crops, or to get new food items, because all these items work for the same purpose of effectively filling the food bar in different ways. So this mod can often play as more of a decoration mod than anything else in many servers, because there just aren't enough built-in usages for crops. I'd love to see this situation improve, but it's hard to know where to start. (more about that in the comments)
I do recommend this though, because this is the most commonly used mod for farming, and for a reason - it's interesting enough to keep people expanding their farms for a while. X Farming is the other option I would recommend, and it's gaining popularity and useability, but both are a bit bloaty and a lot of items just don't have a lot of good uses. Pick your poison.
Difficult Inside the Box-like puzzle with time travel physics
This is a discovery/parkour puzzle, with time travel and time modification. This runs similar to a very difficult Inside the Box entry, for those who have played those - it even looks exactly like one! Finding and recovering artifacts is hard, and there aren't a lot of hints, so you've gotta think outside the box :) As a general hint, you need to try to toggle between past and present to get to locations and find objects, but also, modify the present to find some (a lot) of them. Plants grow over time, so they can help you climb nodes or break nodes as long as they don't get destroyed in the timeline. There aren't a lot of sounds, and the background music got a bit annoying, so I just muted the game.
You can't timetravel if a node is going to be at your position in the new time. But you can get around that (usually) by sneaking to the edge of a node and then time travelling - maybe a bug. It helped me to figure out what positions were going to be viable through the timeline though. Most of your time is going to be spent modifying the timeline with plants, because just time travelling won't get you very far.
For how much effort this puzzle was to solve, I was almost expecting a resolving ending, but the ending didn't make sense to me and didn't feel complete. After the end scene, I was teleported back to the castle to see the same entities, which confused me further. If this counts as unexpectedness, I guess the author gets points. I haven't found all the artifacts yet, they're just incredibly hard to locate and recover!
Despite some shortcomings, this is one of my favorites in the Game Jam, and I hope it continues to get development. It's a really tough puzzle with amazing logic and physics, and I like tough puzzles. :) Recommended - but don't give up easy or this game isn't for you!
Takes spunk and stamina to beat the Shadow
Another incredible game by Wuzzy - The storyline is great, the assets and textures are great, and it has a unique feel that makes the game fascinating. The sounds are awesome. Although this doesn't compare with Glitch for me (which is my personal favorite Minetest mini-game at the time of writing), this is entirely different, focusing on defeating darkness with weapons, skills, and collectables.
The mechanics are pretty simple at first - find vases to get healing essence, and kill mobs to get shadow fragments, then upgrade at your local campfire. The strategy that works best seems to be running mad until you find a house with some amount of protection - then you can kill lots of mobs, gain shadow fragments, and upgrade at the nearby campfire. Unfortunately, I think this bypasses a lot of the fun of the game, which may have been geared more towards exploration, but it's often instead dodging mobs wildly and harvesting them in arbitrary ways. Light crystals are pretty rare, you've got to look for them hard! You need three of them to break the barrier which will eventually lead you to the boss. As the game progresses, it goes from a collecting game to a exploration game, looking for the answers and the boss, and exploring pretty amazing places (all the meanwhile dodging mobs). Once you've got most of the upgrades, you won't have so much trouble with the mobs, but you'll still have to run. The boss is super difficult, and it took me a few tries to defeat him. Keep yourself moving as much as possible and keep throwing light.
As for unexpectedness, I can't really say I was too surprised by anything in particular - Despite that, this is my personal pick for best game of the 2023 Game Jam, and I hope it wins, because it simply feels the most complete and polished of all the games, despite the mobs :-)
I wasn't expecting this for sure
This game has literally nothing to do except pushing a lever. But then there's this chat simulation... and it was so amusing, the game suddenly seemed to be well worth the time. Somehow, despite no gameplay, this is actually pretty fun. And the textures are great, IMO. I debated with myself whether I should really recommend a game with absolutely no gameplay that doesn't even feel like Minetest material, but this is simply the most amusing game I've seen in the Game Jams. Recommended - it won't take you long to win (or even lose :-) ), it's worth a download.
Fairly complete parkour/maze game, with a plot twist at the end!
You need to recover a crystal and bring it back to it's origin to light up the world again. This is a parkour/maze/combat game in one, which is easily finished, but it's a lot of fun to play and feels mostly complete. The gameplay and characters are pretty good and the music fit well. The plot twist at the end was very unexpected and caught me totally offguard - I only barely survived because I hadn't farmed the health powder enough earlier on, I just jumped over the ants many times. The wand is completely intuitive: The "Orange" function of the wand makes you glide in the vector that you are travelling in for a limited time, the "Blue" function gives you the ability to throw blue damage balls at enemies, and the "Green" function shrinks you. Once you get the hang of it, you can solve the levels somewhat proficiently: it does take some time to get used to it though. My main complaint would be that it felt a bit short - I completed it in 30 minutes, but it felt like it could use a few more levels that explain the theme better. For a short playthrough, this game is fantastic - recommended.
Very cool operating system, but not a lot to do with it
There's simply not enough 'gameplay' for this to be worthwhile yet - the mini-games included are cool, but are repetitive and aren't going to keep you interested for very long.
Ideally, the ability to create programs and coding IN the operating system would make this a very entertaining game for computer geeks. But as it is now, it's basically a rad-looking interface that doesn't actually serve any purposes (except the mini-games maybe).
Side note: Digiline touchscreens from the digilines and digilinesplus mods can create a real operating system that can actually be modified by the client, if you work hard enough at it!
Proof of concept, but that's it
This is not a game, and doesn't have any gameplay - but this could be a very interesting mod in the future if properly assembled!
Effectively, this is a proof of concept for dynamic mapgens, but there are only two choices for what is to happen to the mapgen, and a block modifier actively changes the world based on your choice. It's cool, but it's very useless.
If you're looking for a way to customize your world's biomes (among other things), try Josselin's mod Unilib. It's powerful, easy to modify, and supports (by containing) over 200 minetest mods.
Wisdom was checked, but not found, in Part 1!
As mentioned in Zughy's review, this is effectively a 3-step tutorial with some funny credits, and the textures aren't exactly glamorous either. As it is currently, it's not worth your time, other games will check wisdom better!
Best chess implementation in minetest to date
Didn't expect to see a Chess game in this year's Game Jam, that's for sure! This is the most polished chess implementation I've seen yet in minetest and proved to be a lot of fun. Normal chess rules are all here, unlike the other minetest implementations: en passant logic, three-fold repetition, and correct castling! Only one thing I didn't notice was the 50-move rule, but that's not really necessary in a minetest subgame. I would absolutely love to see a Fischer Chess implementation in this game (with proper castling) someday :) Multiplayer chess is pretty cool, but it really needs timers to be at it's full potential, since your opponent can just stall forever. I think it would improve the game a lot if that was added.
The bot itself is OK and interesting to play with, but it's not very smart and could use a lot of work: it is extremely materialistic, and simply can't see most checkmating attacks and pin attacks. It makes decent, solid moves in the opening, but if you set up a decent attack against it, you've basically won the game (Also, it always picks the same opening, which is a little dissapointing). It will usually always take material over a decent defense, which means that if you find tricks in the position, you're going to have a very high success rate. The bot also, most of the time, can't convert winning positions: even if the bot has many pawns and pieces and all you've got is a king, it still somehow manages to find a way to repeat moves and end in a draw. It can definitely win though - if there's a checkmate in immediate sight, it can usually find it.
The unexpected changes to the board were pretty awesome to play a game with, although they could use some highlighting, as I had to search the board for what happened many times. Maybe a 3 second highlighting of the affected pieces would improve the gameplay.
Overall, I really enjoyed this, and I think it's currently the best minetest has to offer in terms of chess.
Saving the world doesn't require solving the puzzles, sadly
I can't bring myself to give this a positive recommendation, despite how much I like the assets and storyline. It's vaguely backrooms-y and the darkness combined with the textures and robots is mildly terrifying. Every time you exit the game and reload, you save your progress but you have to go through the same intro again and lose your old position. Not a big deal though. The problem is that there is simply not much gameplay - the robot control panels are awesome, and solving the robot puzzles was quite entertaining, but they don't actually unlock anything or serve any purpose at all. Your job is simply to get a "robot_2" in a short amount of time, which looks like a black tank, and to find the exit door and right-click on it. This can be done in less than 2 minutes if you're into speedruns, and I know because I tried :) There's also certain places that if you fall into, you won't be able to get out. All the puzzles work, you just need to use the NE/NW/SW/SE direction indicators.
Some more sounds are needed, as there appears to be only one sound during the course of the game (when you finish the game), and making the puzzles actually unlock sectors or switches would be satisfying and justify solving the puzzles! I see there are also some empty rooms on the map, which may have been part of the story, but weren't completed in time(?) - this game is probably still a WIP, so I'm excited to see what will become of it.
(READ COMMENTS for more info)
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 :-)
A simple, practical, widely used mod
When coupled with an automation mod like pipeworks, this mod becomes very powerful: a simple machine can be made to process dirt into bones automatically, and then more machines can be made to autofarm crops or flowers. Even disregarding automation, this mod serves an extremely valuable purpose, allowing builders or landscapers to grow flowers and crops immediately in their surroundings with bonemeal or mulch, or to grow a tree instantly. This mod has become a staple on many servers nowadays, and for good reason!
Mindboggling paradise
I played this game for almost a week when the Tunnelers' Abyss main server was down, and it can definitely be quite addicting at times! Learning 3D minesweeper itself was a bit of a challenge, it's quite a bit harder than 2D minesweeper. But once you get the hang of it, you'll only get faster and faster. A similar 3D minesweeper game can be accessed at http://egraether.com/mine3d/ which helped me to understand it a bit better.
Right-click a block to mark it as a bomb, dig it if you think it isn't one.
Sometimes you can come to a place where there is no continuation without a 'guess' (or at least I thought so), especially on corners - you'll just have to take your chances, or find a different place where there is a solution. Large "cave"-like expanses can open up where bombs don't occur, creating some 2D-like environments where solving is particularly easy, and a large number of solve-able 'exits'.
Highly recommended if you're looking for a mind challenge. Now we just need 4D chess!
Well-rounded biome mod
This may be a biome-adding mod, but get ready for a whole bunch of items you didn't expect- this one is pretty well rounded and adds an awful lot. It can definitely feel a bit bloaty at times, but there's a lot of upside.
The biomes themselves are innovative and fun to explore, except the mushroom biome (my opinion), which seems too repetitive to be interesting after a while. The swamps and volcanoes are some of my favorite. If that mushroom biome or anything else ends up being more common than you'd like it, you'll need to edit the mod settings.
Plenty of feature-rich items, or nodes with a lot of aesthetic appeal, make this worth the "bloat". The crystal tools work like Silk Touch in Minecraft, as well as providing a good reason to find the rare Crystal biome. The added fishing api doesn't seem to fit the mod at first look, but it has differing drops per-biome (fitting it into ethereal's biomes nicely), multiple species of fish, and a few interesting food items. This mod also offers a way to make infinite mese, although it's tough enough that only an experienced user could make a proper farm (and they get big!).
The mapgen is also quite light-weight compared to other biome adding mods. So - if you can handle the extra item count and like what you see - this is for you! Recommended.
Great improvement of jungles
Another awesome biome, keep them coming! This particular jungle feels a lot like Malaysia to me, I can imagine some tapirs/sumatran rhinoceroses roaming near the Rafflesias :)
This looks the best in combination with Liil's texture pack.
Neat maze game, but still in the rough
Gameplay consists of mostly using sprint to get away from the guards (they have decent pathfinding, so you can't just turn a corner and wait), and trying to collect items while you run. This can get rather boring and grind-ish, unless you understand how the game works.
Each map is different- every time you restart the game, you find yourself in a new map. Sometimes, you're unlucky and a guard is right next to you where you spawn ... that's annoying and probably a bug. Sometimes, you end up in a maze where you will meet 3 or 4 guards before you ever see an item chest, which will basically lead you to sprinting wildly and hoping for some breakthrough, which usually never comes. Sometimes, you find yourself in a maze where you gather 10+/20+ items before seeing a single guard, which makes the game too easy!
Stealth is not incorporated into this game, sadly. You can't try to sneak around the guards or anything, because they are programmed to 'see' players within a radius, so they can just see through walls. If the guards acted more human - i.e., they only remember where they saw you go, and they don't know where you are currently, it would add a dynamic of stealth to the game and make the game much more interesting. (example: turning three corners very quickly in an attempt to 'shake' off the guards)
In some maps, the best strategy is just to make a wild run for the exit without taking any items at all. In others, you're not going to find the exit quickly, and you need to find items and play it safe.
More in the comments ->
Nailed the RPG feel
Remarkable texture pack- I've enjoyed this one for a long time because of it's consistency, beauty, and its support for so many mods, including ethereal, moretrees, and moreblocks, mods that I often come in contact with. Every single texture fits right into the style and makes a wonderful atmosphere.
Selling things has never been easier
A great mod for all economy-related servers! Starting a shop is simple & straight-forward with this mod.
For a well optimized fork with more features, check out flux's fork of smartshop.
Fantastic biomes that fit right into minetest_game
I am surprised how good these biomes look w/ minetest_game, well done! This opens up numerous opportunities for adding new mobs to fit every biome (like crocodiles in the bogs, pandas in bamboo forests, etc), a lot of new exploring potential, and a lot of new crops/foods!
A few textures don't fit into MTG too well: namely bamboo and downy birch (and maybe cranberries should have a texture more like blackcurrants, it's hard to tell whether the texture looks like berries or not). This is really just my opinion though, everything looks quite good already.
Highly recommended, this is one of the best biome-adding mods for MTG I've seen so far!
Amusing
Enjoy the tool/armor textures, they're hilarious. I guess this mod is mostly for the memes, not meant to be a serious mod, but it's pretty fun anyway!
No new functionality, other mods do the same job better
This mod adds no uses for the silver provided other than tools and armor - also, the textures are inconsistent, with the tools actually having the exact same textures as the iron tools in minetest_game/default.
If you're looking for a mod that adds silver, try Moreores by Calinou, or if you want a mod that adds a similarly looking block/ore, try Quartz by Evergreen. These mods have been around a long time and are used by a lot of other mods, creating actual uses for them.
Consistent font
Always felt like a font or two was missing from the display modpack! This one looks consistent and polished. +1
Keep in mind, this will only be usable for certain signs from the display modpack, it won't change the font on formspecs or your game.
Awesome API for data graphing in formspecs!
This was something I was looking for, but was using my own ugly implementation - this is much cleaner! Highly recommended - for an example of how to use this, check out
examples.luain the source.My only complaint is that declaring a function name
SimpleChart/CustomChartcould cause potential conflicts, why not try something likepolygraph.simplechart/polygraph.customchart?Realistic island-like map generation
This is quite a compelling mapgen - with a little fine-tuning you can get islands that look reminiscent of Hawaiian landmasses!
This mod adds its own trees and flora - so it is not compatible with mods that add flora or new biomes yet. You can enable them - they just won't show up in the mapgen with this mod enabled. Support for customized flora/biomes on these islands would be great!
Additionally, rivers are not a thing in this mapgen, sadly. There are 'inlets' of water and reservoirs which spawn inside islands - sometimes this can result in a huge chasm in the island all the way down to a muddy puddle! (which seems to not be intended)
So, there is a bit more work to do here, but this has the beginnings of a masterpiece! Kudos to Termos.
The ores are mostly useless
This mod adds a bunch of ores that have no unique uses, and the textures are inconsistent. While this may make caves more interesting, after a while nobody will care because the ores themselves don't serve any purpose!
I would recommend that the mod add more interesting uses for each of it's ores, that are unique not only to each ore, but differing from other ore-adding mods... there are a lot of them now which add very little new gameplay or incentive to gather the ores provided.
However, this mod is pretty good for testing Calinou's Law :-)
Pretty much useless
The texture style doesn't fit at all with minetest, and the functionality is more-or-less useless- trees are already infinite in MTG and most games. If you need to cut wood faster in survival, choose a mod like Woodcutting.
Nice demo of mobkit's functionality
This is a light mod that proves some pathfinding and lag advantages of mobkit - the code itself is very well optimized. However, this is just a demo- there's no spawning or player-mob functionality (other than attacking the player) like taming, etc. It adds two mobs: A wolf and a gazelle which interact with each other, pretty cool to see the predator-prey chases :)
Best animals mod currently
This is currently the dragon up the freeway when it comes to Minetest animal mods - a well polished work of art! Kudos to ElCeejo.
The Mobs
The animals themselves are well polished, have more behaviorial logic than any other mod not made by ElCeejo, and are really immersive!
The models stick to a consistent style which is asthetically pleasing and the textures go right along w/ the style to boot.
Sure, the mobs are going to end up being a bit robotic while walking around with nothing to do, but these are some of the least robotic mobs I've seen so far. Herding/Flocking behaviours stand out, as well as aerial predation (i.e. Owl)- I think they add a genius touch.
Lag
When you're dealing with all these behaviours, expect a bit of extra lag in return. This particular mod is pretty laggy for any public server, even with bird flocking nerfed :-)
However, it compares nicely with other mob mods like petz or mobs_animal per mob - These mods don't have even close to the amount of features animalia has, but don't optimize their code well enough to provide a significant lag differential, whereas animalia has pretty decent optimization. The (slight bit of) extra lag is worth it!
Nice way to jumpstart a server
Having a good path system does more for a new server than one might think- and this mod does it for you! Also, if you use vehicle mods, you can ride around (almost) endlessly on these roads :)
My suggestion for the mod would be to make what nodes the road is made out of configurable, currently it is hard-coded; you can do it by changing the content ID's in
init.luaand/or changing the description/textures of the nodes innodes.lua, but that's not as desirable as an easy setting!Great mod ... if there is low lag
Gliders can do all sorts of things with even minor lags. The bonus effects you can get are quite humorous (at least for me) and add a degree of irregularity.
If you get it right, you can get an upwards thrust which can make you shoot into the air (sometimes over 10 nodes!), helping you to climb stuff.
Maybe you jump off a cliff and try deploying your glider only to fall to your death because the glider didn't open in time, or it disabled itself somehow.
Or you can even deploy your glider while on the ground (which normally shouldn't work) and start jumping around while experiencing the awesome physics of the glider - eventually this won't work anymore, but it has lasted quite a while sometimes (upwards of 30 seconds!), with a moderate amount of lag!
Or maybe you rubberband(?) - falling down from a cliff slowly and surely, only to find yourself shooting into the sky and your glider suddenly disabled!
In general though, >80% of the time the glider works great for me, and I live in a really heavy game :-) Most users of this mod will likely never run into these issues. If you need to survive a fall down a cavern or just like gliding off of towers for the thrill, this mod is for you! Recommended.
Impractical for most usecases
This makes messaging offline players pretty simple, without all the extra bloat of a mail mod. If the bloat isn't a problem I would reccomend a mail mod and not this mod, as it is really useful to see your old messages and keep up with conversations better and answer messages when you want to!
Although this adds a good way to message offline players, it isn't practical: You're only going to see the message once, so you need to either reply quickly or copy the message down and reply later - not convienent. Plus, getting spammed by messages when you join the game is not often a lot of fun! And if the player is going to respond to them is a whole different matter. So, this isn't even close to the perfect solution, but it will do the job for some servers.
I'm only recommending this because the description says
Sure, some servers have an email/mailbox system, but for many, such systems are overly complex. That's why I made tell.- but if you can spare the space for a mail mod, I wouldn't recommend this.Great physics, but reconsider speed?
Overall, a very nice mod- the boats work well, models are great, and the physics are great. I'm a big fan of this mod.
However, the boats are slow. If you want to go in a particular direction and the wind happens to be in your favor, you'll go fast- but anything else and you'll be going really slow. Turning off your sail (which you can toggle with Spacebar) will make you go a little bit faster, but still not as fast (about 2/3 as fast) as the regular boats:boat! There is really not much you can do when the wind isn't agreeing with you.
If you use this mod alongside the
boatsmod, you might find yourself using the boats:boat more than this one for that reason.I propose something like up-wind propulsion (which happens in irl boats) - some new physics to make this a rival to the boats:boat! People smart enough to sail their ship well should be rewarded by beating out the boats:boat guys :-) Thanks for the great mod, Termos!Simply awesome for spelunking and mountaineering
If you want to explore caves how they were meant to be explored (which is not towering cobble up to get higher!), this mod takes the stage. If there's a cliff or a ledge you want to get up on, just throw your grappling hook up there and climb up! This has made spelunking a lot more fun for me, since I like to explore rather than mine a lot of the time :)
Additionally, this mod adds a few other nodes other than the ropes/hooks - The PChest is a portable inventory (which can be quite useful to store your ores on a mining trip, as well as many other applications), there's a mouth breather assembly in case you want to venture far into the ocean, and a slingshot for throwing stuff at other players/mobs!
Best windows mod hands down
This mod goes way beyond the title: The glass designs are great and all, but how you use the designs can make or break your experience! The glass can be partially embedded inside other nodes, meaning that you can make rounded/complex windows in many different ways. This may not seem like a lot, but it adds a lot of detail and beauty to any building!
Here are a few examples:
https://imgur.com/Sa2Ybck.png
https://imgur.com/j9jaftK.png
https://imgur.com/bKTq2y4.png
The last example is my own design which has a window in 0 nodes! The trick is that the window node is hidden in one of the adjacent 'nodes' - this is with no changes to the mod, so you can do it too :)
No-brainer
Other schematic editors are just not as simple as this mod! I have used this for all of my schematics for more than 3 years now, and can say that I have never run into any problems.
I agree with Hugues, that a function to quickly change nodes within the region would be useful, especially for turning air nodes into void nodes. One can also use Worldedit to accomplish this- it hardly adds any new complication, and is quick & easy to use.
A must-have if you use technic
These portable powerbanks, which charge in the battery box, are truly a quality-of-life addition for any modbase containing technic: Being able to charge your tools on the go is a lot nicer than you might have thought it would be and makes for more productive mining trips.
High quality extinct mobs
Everything about this mod is pretty awesome and I'm a big fan of it: I'm sort of being overly critical here to try to review this mod as best as I can.
The dinosaurs themselves - The mobs feel very consistent in the style as well as the textures, ElCeejo has obviously put a lot of work into making things stick to a certain design! The animations are also great, and each animal (except for water mobs and flying mobs) have a sleeping animation during night, which is really cute. Pathfinding is pretty decent, especially compared to other existing mobs mods. The amount of mobs added here, as well as the quality, make for a great experience: I look forward to new updates.
There are a few obvious problems: for example, the pteranodon model has a missing face, as well as the plesiosaurus model, which doesn't make for a good look. Things like velociraptors and smilodons can glitch right through solid nodes because of their small collisionboxes and high speed: and you're going to have some trouble building an aviary for your pteranodons too because they seem to glitch through anything with a bit of lag.
The dinosaurs can also be fairly robotic at times. Sadly, there is no good way to fix this without a lot of new pathfinding code and animations, which no other mod does except draconis (and a few animalia mobs).
For animals with big collisionboxes, enclosures can be easily made and maintained. The electric fences included with the mod will keep your dinosaur inside the enclosure, but it will also damage the dinosaur each time the collisionbox goes into the electric fence, killing dinosaurs if you aren't careful. I'd love to see a better implementation of this concept: like an electric shock which doesn't actually damage the mob, but makes it run a small distance from the fence.
Despite these issues, this is truly an underrated mod with stunning visuals and gameplay, kudos to ElCeejo. More in the comments->
Highly customizable skins w/ no bloat
If you're looking for a good skin mod without all the bloat of mods like u_skins, this is for you. A ridiculous amount of media can simply go into skin options on public servers nowadays, and this mod makes that media almost 0.
Additionally, the customization features are pretty good: to rival u_skins textures a few more options might be needed, but this mod does all it needs to: offering a fantastic alternative to bloated skin mods! The formspec is also top notch. Recommended!
A nice mod if you need more uses for lava
The lava ingots can be used for all sorts of recipes in other mods, providing a great use for lava; as noted, stuff dug with lava tools is put in your inventory as the smelted item (digging cobble, for example, yields stone), and lava tools can light players/nodes on fire (seems a little OP, but definitely realistic :)), so the tools actually serve a purpose!
I have experimented with setups to farm lava ingots the fastest and have settled on one that uses pipeworks: 4 advanced vacuuming tube segments with max range (8) are put on the sides of an autocrafter which is configured to craft lava orbs and is sitting in a lava lake. You will only need to fill the autocrafter with maybe a few stacks of mese crystals, and then fill your inventory with random items. The trick is to have your inventory full, so the buckets drop after collecting the lava, which are then vacuumed and processed by the autocrafter. The empty buckets are then found in the output slots of the autocrafter, so you can do it over again. After you've gathered all the lava you can in that spot, you can move to a new lava lake.
Badly needed improvement of smartshops
This improves lag from smartshops a lot, as I was able to see first-hand on Tunnelers' Abyss, and the api just ends up being much smarter than the original. The new currency system works great, allowing you to make purchases such as buying something that costs a "10 note" for two "5 notes". Additionally, the smartshop updates with the meta from the item which will be sold to you; in the original, this was not implemented and could be used to sell you a below average item while advertising a fully-upgraded item.
Fair warning, your smartshops will mostly have 2D sprite displays now instead of the 3D model entities. This can be a painful reality, and some people were fairly upset about it, but in the long run, your client will thank you for not having to render those 3D entities.
Even more shapes for building
These particular shapes seem to be best suited towards ancient western buildings, like Greek, Indian, or Egyptian buildings. If you're looking for more modern shapes, try mymillwork by Don, although it is a bit heavier.
Nostalgic mod that is always fun for miners
Hunting these is a lot of fun: sadly, they have no practical use, but several mods add uses for the nyancat nodes. Miss the days when nyan cats were bundled with minetest_game :) The original nyancats didn't glow AFAIK(?), but no complaints.
The background image is mine, and I did not specify a license!! /jk, good to see the screenshot getting some love. https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4589&p=361844#p361844
Too sweet
Simple, but very nice mod- great for decorating bakeries or birthday parties, or eat the pies as a satisfying dessert. Would reccomend brushing your teeth afterwards though, because sugar content can be up to 50%!
Best lighting mod at the moment IMO
The models are not too high-poly, but not too low either, fitting right into most game styles. This can be used for a wide range of buildings, from vintage/medieval to modern/space styles, and the mod itself is well-polished- although I could cry a bit about the expensiveness of the recipes since I use them so much for my builds :)
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!
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.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.
WIP, but a great concept
I think this game has a good concept, but to continue the concept the game must go a long way.
Some of the machines are functional, as well as the cannons (very cool), but some could use better functionality and logic (and some of them are just decorative). The game is also severely lacking documentation, it isn't at all obvious what the player is supposed to do while waiting for a pirate ship to attack, for example. You can also just dig up your whole ship if you want to and you won't suffocate or anything. It looks like an implementation for oxygen generation and player reliance on oxygen was started, along with an airlock, but unfinished. There is not a game finish or goal (other than defending your ship) either, so far.
That said, the window for the game jam was small and I'm sure this mod has far to fly! I will be happy to update my review when that does happen :) I'm also a fan of the textures, which follow the style very well.
Hard game, but lacking some things
This game does seem to be fairly playable and interesting so I'm giving it an upvote, although with a lot of asterisks :) Gameplay is alright, but will get somewhat boring after a while as the map becomes somewhat repetitive. However, maybe this is supposed to be part of the experience. In general, players probably need to keep moving, as the newly generated areas will have more of the items that you need and less of the spiders. This game could probably use some documentation as well, as some things are unclear unless you experiment for quite a while, like for example how to fix a computer. The textures are fairly consistent and seem to follow the game's style well.
The spiders and eggs can be harvested by towering up on your favorite block just within reach of the eggs, then digging while the spiders below which may be protecting the eggs have no chance of hurting you. I'm not sure if this is a feature, or un-intended, but without this, the spiders are almost impossible to get away from. They seem to come in every direction with huge speed (faster than the player's typical walking speed?) and with no swords included in the game, and limited lighting, I'm not sure if this game is solve-able without that. A way to escape the spiders is to quickly make a lot of turns in the corridors, but you have to do this with sprint to keep out of their reach, which is quite expensive!
In short, this definitely has the workings of a good game, just needs some extra touches to make it enjoyable, as well as a proper ending.
Tough game, with strengths and shortcomings
A tough game - This seems playable, especially thanks to the COMP unit which is very helpful and helps document the game. But it's probably super hard for one person to beat this game- as noted in the OP, it seems like multiplayer is going to end up being more playable. Hence, perhaps a version suited more for singleplayer would be useful in the future.
One sad part for me is that the land is mostly barren and rather repetitive/boring: but personally I think the mapgen sort of makes up for that, as the mountains are really quite good.
A problem I noticed is that you can get the mobs stuck on your head - they'll spin around on top of your head without damaging you at all! I had maybe 5 of them on top of my head this way- a potential fix is making them have collisionboxes.
Also, gui_hb_bg.png is missing.
Some polishing needed
This appears to mostly be a game made up of existing mods, and the experience is fine, similar to other moon survival games, but it lacks a lot of documentation and polish to make things nice and unique from the other games. Not many new players are going to be able to take the oxygen tanks from the crate and put them into the air generator before they've already ran out of breath! And if you stand on top of your landing site marker - watch out, you're going to get trapped by the rocket when it shows up. A small bit of documentation would clear this up. Additionally, most of the items in the inventory are completely unobtainable the way the game is currently set up; and some things like mithril armor/mithril dust are erroneous, as they never appear in the game.
I look forward to how this game progresses and will be happy to change my review when things are improved! :)
Experience reminiscent of the Scott Adams ATARI Adventures
This game truly has a story-feel to it, and I think the textures are pretty much consistent; gives it a very sci-fi feel. The storyline is fairly well-done and has the potential of the best game submitted for the Jam, but it lacks a proper ending, in my opinion. I've put the following critique inside of a imgur image so that people who want to solve the game on their own won't be upset at my review ;)
[Potential spoilers, do not read ahead if you want to find things on your own]
https://i.imgur.com/780kBln.png
In short, this is an great story game and has a bright future, but it needs a finished storyline that feels fulfilling and doesn't leave too many questions.
Tetris-like puzzle game with great scenery
A fantastic puzzle game, just wish there were more levels!
The work that Warr has put into the scenery and textures is beautiful, making the game enjoyable and solving the puzzles more than worth it. The gravity and 'bouncing' off walls is also a lot of fun.
The curve from easy puzzles to difficult puzzles was too fast though, in my opinion. If more levels were more gradually added working up to an ending, I believe it might be a little easier for a new player to learn the logic. However, this game is definitely completely playable and proved a somewhat short, but very fulfilling experience.
Very unique game
Fascinating experience that feels fairly complete: the attention to details in the mapgen is very nice and makes exploring interesting. The custom inventory and radar makes for a nice feel as well.
One huge problem is lag: This game is a monster for anyone's CPU. Items that you've dug will take a few seconds to appear in the inventory, lights take many seconds to place, etc.
The story also seems a little rushed, perhaps more elements to the story and a more fulfilling finish would be nice. The radar and inventory can also be quite confusing for a new player: a better explanation of it would be helpful. Other than that, this seems fun and playable.
Fun parkour-like game with a great story
This is a game that really feels complete! The storyline is great, the characters have varying personalities, the levels are well made, the textures are consistent, the sound effects, documentation, and texture effects are incredible - and best of all, it's quite fun!
The quality opening sequence is also something that I believe defines this game and makes you feel part of your own character. Well done, Wuzzy!
I wish that this game was longer, because it is really a joy to play (being a parkour fan myself :)). As mentioned, the slide controls are somewhat erratic and it takes a bit of experience: after a while, it becomes somewhat consistent if you use Shift (Sneak) in combination. It can also be somewhat confusing when you can use E to 'dash' and when you can't: on slopes, the dashing often doesn't work but (if you glitch? :)) it does work from time to time. On solid blocks, it usually always works in the right areas. If you get going downhill, you probably won't be able to stop yourself, as velocity increases like crazy.
EDIT: After finishing the game I have nothing but more praise for it: this is extremely well polished and has a wonderful ending that is amusing and proves a very difficult puzzle! This is my personal pick for the best game of the Jam. I enjoyed it immensely, thank you Wuzzy!
However, not enough scenery/immersiveness
An interesting puzzle game, but in my opinion, it's lacking a lot of details which would make solving the puzzle more enjoyable, like scenery and more custom items/textures which make puzzles perhaps a bit more challenging.
For what it's worth though, I love your games and can see this turning into something very good, hence why I struggled to put a no vote on this. I will be sure to update this review after the game jam when/if things are improved!
EDIT: I've decided to change from -1 to +1 for this mod, because there's really no reason why I wouldn't reccomend this game: the puzzles are interesting and creative. My criticism still applies, but after getting a better idea for how the ratings work, it doesn't make sense for me to have a no vote here.
Mediocre
A degree of realism to this game: The 4 nodes included in the mapgen are pretty similar to what you'd find on the moon in real life. This works well as a short collection game, but isn't really interesting. The title is sort of false advertising, as there is no secret to find :) In the future, it would be interesting to incorporate more elements so that the game is playable for longer.
Additionally, there is currently a crash you can make by clicking the jackhammer on many nodes very quickly.
Good idea, but not enough content
Feels like it is missing a lot so far. For an exploration game, it feels like there needs to be quite a lot going on: in this case, there is only 10 or so mapgen nodes, and no mobs to interact with. I could see this game going far though, especially if it could go somewhere similar to Loria (with advanced mapgen and crafting/survival mechanics), but with these tiny planets instead. :)