I managed to find the exit just by moving around arbitrarily. It took me a few seconds each time, because I didn't remember which way it was, but it wasn't hard :)
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 :-)
You're welcome! I didn't understand that that guy was still there at the end though. I thought he would be dead now! There's a few explanations for how that could have happened though...
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.
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.
Thank you for the detailed response! Yes, I figured the reasons for the bot behaviour would be something like that - perhaps in a future version you could finetune the thinking time for the bot, for "higher rated" bots? I would be absolutely thrilled to see those things implemented (and most importantly the timer, of course) :) - And yeah, I was just curious if the rendition of Moonlight Sonata was actually played & recorded, because I enjoy playing that song too. Not a problem at all, great job on this game!!
Thanks for the response - Yes, I figured there were some time restraints going on here, it's still an impressive game though and was quite entertaining. Maybe the speedrun thing should be under a spoiler, haha, but it's very good to hear that the puzzles will be required to solve the game in the future! I'll be happy to update my review when that does happen :)
And sorry, it looks like I selected "Negative" but I really meant to select "Neutral". Updated.
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!
Unrelated, but did you play and record the moonlight sonata rendition in the main menu (Since you said everything was created by you)? That's pretty impressive if so - just wanted to give credit where credit is due :)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 :-)
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!
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!
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.
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.
The TNT also ends up being pretty useless, because you'd need an awful lot of them, as well as a lot of food (because it damages you each time you use it) to actually tunnel through a wall. And by that time, you'll be caught by guards anyways...
The 'exit' to the maze is just about everywhere on the edge of the maze, which is about 290x290 nodes. Unfortunately, this makes it quite easy to speedrun to an edge based on where you are. You always spawn at 140,140, which is roughly the center of the maze, but now you know you only have to go about 140-150 blocks in a certain direction to win. This knowledge helps an awful lot, because otherwise you can end up aimlessly wandering looking for some exit.
You win by just jumping out of the building, which is OK, but it doesn't feel like a proper ending. Even generating a treed forest around the jail would be an improvement, and then the bugs would be eliminated because the game could be won when the player steps on the grass.
To summarize, this is a neat maze that can be somewhat challenging, but it's lacking a lot of dynamic/interest and has a few bugs.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.lua in the source.
My only complaint is that declaring a function name SimpleChart / CustomChart could cause potential conflicts, why not try something like polygraph.simplechart / polygraph.customchart?
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.
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 :-)
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.
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 :)
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!
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.lua and/or changing the description/textures of the nodes in nodes.lua, but that's not as desirable as an easy setting!
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.
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.
I managed to find the exit just by moving around arbitrarily. It took me a few seconds each time, because I didn't remember which way it was, but it wasn't hard :)
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 :-)
You're welcome! I didn't understand that that guy was still there at the end though. I thought he would be dead now! There's a few explanations for how that could have happened though...
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.
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.
Thank you for the detailed response! Yes, I figured the reasons for the bot behaviour would be something like that - perhaps in a future version you could finetune the thinking time for the bot, for "higher rated" bots? I would be absolutely thrilled to see those things implemented (and most importantly the timer, of course) :) - And yeah, I was just curious if the rendition of Moonlight Sonata was actually played & recorded, because I enjoy playing that song too. Not a problem at all, great job on this game!!
Thanks for the response - Yes, I figured there were some time restraints going on here, it's still an impressive game though and was quite entertaining. Maybe the speedrun thing should be under a spoiler, haha, but it's very good to hear that the puzzles will be required to solve the game in the future! I'll be happy to update my review when that does happen :)
And sorry, it looks like I selected "Negative" but I really meant to select "Neutral". Updated.
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!
Unrelated, but did you play and record the moonlight sonata rendition in the main menu (Since you said everything was created by you)? That's pretty impressive if so - just wanted to give credit where credit is due :)
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.
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!
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.
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)
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 :-)
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!
All good ideas! I haven't worked on this project for a while, but I'll have to see if I can find some time to give it a few updates.
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!
I'd definitely be for that! :-)
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.
A setting would definitely clear up the controversy, +1 to that!
These are simple decorative nodes, they don't really need bloated functionality. Why the downvote?
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.
Excellent, will check it out!
The TNT also ends up being pretty useless, because you'd need an awful lot of them, as well as a lot of food (because it damages you each time you use it) to actually tunnel through a wall. And by that time, you'll be caught by guards anyways...
The 'exit' to the maze is just about everywhere on the edge of the maze, which is about 290x290 nodes. Unfortunately, this makes it quite easy to speedrun to an edge based on where you are. You always spawn at 140,140, which is roughly the center of the maze, but now you know you only have to go about 140-150 blocks in a certain direction to win. This knowledge helps an awful lot, because otherwise you can end up aimlessly wandering looking for some exit.
You win by just jumping out of the building, which is OK, but it doesn't feel like a proper ending. Even generating a treed forest around the jail would be an improvement, and then the bugs would be eliminated because the game could be won when the player steps on the grass.
To summarize, this is a neat maze that can be somewhat challenging, but it's lacking a lot of dynamic/interest and has a few bugs.
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 ->
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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?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.
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 :-)
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.
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 :)
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!
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!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.
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.