Luanti

Luanti, formerly known as Minetest, is a free and open-source voxel game creation platform built around exploration, building, modding, and multiplayer. While its origins are closely tied to the early wave of Minecraft-inspired games, the project has grown far beyond that premise. Today, Luanti is better understood as an engine and distribution platform for an entire collection of community-created games.

At the foundation is the familiar voxel sandbox: enormous procedurally generated worlds made from blocks that players can dig, place, manipulate, and build with. You can explore underground caves, gather resources, construct elaborate structures, craft equipment, and shape the environment around you. But that's only the starting point.

The really interesting part is what happens when you open the ContentDB, Luanti's built-in library of community-created games, mods, and texture packs. Instead of simply adding a few modifications to one fixed experience, Luanti allows developers to create entirely new games using its engine and Lua-based API.

That means the same platform can host traditional survival games, RPGs, technical automation experiences, adventure games, multiplayer worlds, and projects that barely resemble the original voxel sandbox concept. You can download these experiences directly through the client and jump between them without needing to hunt down obscure websites or manually install complicated modifications.

The modding system is similarly extensive. Developers can change almost every aspect of a game, from adding a single decorative block to implementing entirely new gameplay systems, creatures, inventories, economies, quests, or world-generation mechanics. Mods are also server-side, meaning multiplayer servers can provide their required content automatically when players connect.

Multiplayer is a major part of the platform's identity. Luanti supports both small private worlds and large public servers, with communities building persistent worlds around their own rules and collections of mods.

Technically, Luanti is also remarkably accessible. It runs across Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, and Android, and its relatively low hardware requirements make it playable on machines that would struggle with many modern 3D games.

The project was officially renamed from Minetest to Luanti in 2024 to reflect what it had become: not simply a Minecraft-like game, but a platform for creating voxel games.