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With geo-politics being what they are; I’ve been looking for alternatives to big US tech where I can.

Recently I tried Luanti and was impressed with the ease of set up both on desktop and mobile.

Keep reading to learn more about my experience and whether I’ll be be dumping Minecraft for good.

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User experience matters

I had returned to Minecraft after a 2-3 month hiatus.

1. First I created a new instance in CurseForge to add some tools that arguable should be native to Minecraft at this point. (Mods in Luanti do not require an additional launcher)
2. Then I had to remember which credential to use for my log-in. whether I was using my Mojang, Microsoft or x-box credential?
3. And once I got my credentials sorted I then had to restart the launcher because my wi-fi wasn’t connected before I started the log in process.

A few days later I decided I would finally try Luanti and was surprised by how straight forward it was. So with what seems to be a better user experience with less barriers to playtime, could Luanti offer a future for my block based play?

First off, what is luanti?

You don’t play Luanti, Luanti is not a game. Luanti is a engine/client that allows voxel games and mods to be developed and shared with other users. Minecraft is a voxel game; Roblox is a platform for voxel games and other games have joined this genre over the years.

Once the Luanti engine is downloaded a game or games can be downloaded in the client. You can tab between those games and add mods to those games in the client. if you head over to Luanti.org you you can learn more and browse the ContentDB for games and mods.

Games I tried

This is a list of games I trued in Luanti; what stood out and whether I see myself playing in the future. If you’ve tried any of these I’d love to hear your experience and seeing your builds!

Asuna

This was the first game I tried and wow I was immediately taken back by its beauty. If you’ve ever tried the better end mods available for Minecraft, it reminded me of this.

Standouts

• There are some great block pallets waiting to be explored here.
• The research system is interesting. By researching items you gain infinite duplication of that block; an alternative to resource farming.

This game would be a great option for creative orientated players who shy away from PvE and aren’t looking for the challenge/reward redstone and farming provides.

For me, however, these missing components are why I moved on.

Exile

This is the game I think I’m most likely to come back to occasionally. Just note the survival challenge here is border line rage quit. Despite being someone who is not seeking maximum challenge when gaming; the problem solving aspect is attractive.

Standouts:

• Sense of reward is high.
• This game challenges you to slow down and breathe.
• The concept of seasons,

There are no shortcuts, even sleeping doesn’t skip the night. You make the most of your situation and act with intention.

The concept of seasons, weather and the associated dynamics are the game mechanic that has me wanting to come back. I’ll return at some point to see if I can survive the cold of winter.

I recommend avoiding if a significant challenge and a slow inevitable death on your first couple tries are going to ruin your gaming escape. Death isn’t a full loss, you can find your items again and benefit from any progress you made if you can find your way back to your things or base.

Mineclonia

This is a near direct copy of Minecraft. I think mechanics are similar to Bedrock rather than java which presented a challenge. Once I reached the stage where a mob farm would be helpful I wasn’t able to execute and that stalled my progression.

I appreciated the familiarity over the other games, knowing what to do and what blocks to seek for my creative efforts.

Standouts:

• If you like supper huge fantasy cliffs and mountains they are there in abundance (or can be toggled off)
• Familiar to anyone coming over from Minecraft
• Shaders available by default
• textures are better (a matter of taste)

The dilemma here is whether you want a lower quality version of Minecraft. That isn’t as simple and quick “of course not” as you might think. The developers have focused on matching mechanics and content of Minecraft; however, UI and some other quality of life features are challenging especially with a controller.

There’s a few different games that seek to emulate Minecraft. Each has different levels of mods available. I haven’t explored the modding much but others have and shared online.

Wrap up

There’s a major advantage to open source, community driven projects. They are built to add value to the community; rather than to extract value from that community. A goal of any publicly traded company is to provide a return to its shareholders. That goal tends to have minimal alignment with your best interests.

Running well on an aging PC, not sponsoring Microsoft and or part in the developments are attractive features with any of these games.

These projects, however, don’t always offer a superior product. There lies the root of my dilemma. Whether I spend my time creating and sharing a world built in a game that is less polished, has more bugs, has a smaller community and I’m not familiar with.

I may come back to to Mineclonia in the future.

I know Minecraft very well and tutorials exist for everything. It is becoming more coherent and polished with every update. Is the current state of development in the Luanti universe at a point where I can dedicate my time and find a creative outlet and the same immersive experience? I’m still testing that.

At this time I’m not abandoning Minecraft to focus my time in Luanti. But I’ll keep experimenting in the background and likely have more content focused on Luanti in the future.