Minetest games (also called “subgames”) are essentially a pre-tested collection of Mods. After installing Minetest, “Minetest Game” and “Minimal development test” should be available on Minetest's main menu. In certain circumstances, such as after compiling Minetest, Minetest_game may not be available to play as it is not included in the Minetest engine source. If that is so, Minetest game can be downloaded from here “Minimal development test” is used by developers and is not intended to be played. When a player starts a Minetest game, all the mods packaged with that game will be used. Most community made games are posted in the games sub-forum, however several notable games are also listed on this page.

Notable Games

Official Games

The following games are installed in Minetest:

Minetest (minetest_game)

This is the default game in Minetest. It covers all the blocks and items and most other stuff you find in this wiki.

Minimal development test (minimal)

This game is not intended for playing, just for testing. This game contains mods specific to testing, like the "tester tool". It also always gives items to players upon joining and uses different default textures. It only features one sound when walking on grass, no other sounds are included.

Unofficial Games

Unofficial games do not come by pre-installed with Minetest and have to be downloaded first. Many such games can be found in the subforum “Minetest Games”.

"Overhaul" Games:

Dwarves

Tries to recreate a fantasy world look and feel.

Eden

This game tries to create a very detailed and diverse flora among other things. While producing very pleasing landscapes the full version is compared to others rather large and map generating can be very demanding on the hardware side.

Lord of the Test

A survival mode game that brings middle-earth to Minetest.

Nodetopia

Aims to have a challenging survival gameplay with strong focus on the "voxel idea". The author has not officially release it yet.

Nostalgia

Recreates the look and feel of Minetest 0.3.1 (Classic) while using a more recent version of the Minetest-engine.

Realtest

Some major changes to the gameplay offer a pretty different experience and this game. It is developed in two different branches and often used to demonstrate that the game can be made to differ from the default game a lot.

Technic

Focuses around the technic mods.

Wasteland

This game focuses on a survival mode in a post apocalyptic themed world.

"Improvement" Games:

Carbone

Aims for more balanced gameplay.

Minetest NeXt

With the release of Minetest version 0.4.10 Minetest NeXt got merged into the default game (minetest_game) and all further developed will take place at minetest_game.

Voxelgarden

Basic gameplay with more survival features.

"Rehash" Games:

BFD (Big Freaking Dig)

Big Freaking Dig is exactly what it says on the tin: get as many ores as possible.

Larger list of Minetest Subgames

Installing Games

Once a Minetest game has been downloaded, find game download links in the games sub-forum, it needs to be extracted or unzipped from the archive file(.zip, .tar.gz, ect.). If the extracted folder has "-master" appended to the end of the name, remove it from the name, for example “minetest_game-master” to “minetest_game”. This only happens when the game archive is downloaded from github.

Games are installed in the games/ sub-directory of Minetest. Move the folder you extracted from the download into this directory so you have games/extracted_folder (i.e. games/minetest_game).

Below is a listing of Minetest's "in-place install" directory. games/, mods/, and textures/ are locations where community content can be installed.

minetest/
├── bin/
├── builtin/
├── cache/
├── client/
├── doc/
├── fonts/
├── games/
│   ├── minetest_game/
│   ├── minimal/
│   └── ... (installed extra games)
├── locale/
├── mods/
│   └── ... (installed extra mods and modpacks)
├── textures/
│   ├── base/
│   │   └── pack/
│   └── ... (installed extra texturepacks)
└── worlds/
    └── ... (saved worlds. Some with exclusive world mods)

Creating Games

Minetest subgames are in the games/ subdirectory. To create a new game, create a new folder in this directory which has a name without spaces (use "_" in place of a space if you want). Within this folder create two more folders and two files.

The mods/ folder is where the game's mods, the actual content, will go.
The menu/ folder holds some details needed by Minetest's main menu.
The game.conf file is used to define the game's name which is displayed in the Minetest main menu. Open this file with a text editor and add a single line: "name = your games name here"
Optionally you can add a minetest.conf file which allows you to set Minetest will use. This file can override a number of default options.

Any other files and folders are ignored by Minetest. It is suggested that at least a readme.txt should be added to describe the game and give its author(s) and version.

Menu Folder

The menu folder allows you to provide images that will be used on the main menu.

background.png if present will be used as a background replacing the default clouds animation. This image will be re-sized to fully fill the minetest window.
header.png if present will show the header image, usually some stylized text, in-front of the background.
icon.png is a 48 by 48 pixel image that will be used in the game selection list to identify the game.

Mods Folder

Any mods and mod packs needed by the game should be added to this folder. Make sure each mod's dependencies are met or the game will crash.

Minetest will look for texture files with specific names. If these are not found in any of the mod texture folders, an error will be raised and dummy images will be created.

crack_anylength.png
heart.png
player.png
player_back.png

Details of file and folder structures within a game

This example has the default games "minetest_game" and "minimal" installed and shows a possible structure of an own game in "my_game":

    games/
    ├── minetest_game/
    │   ├── game.conf
    │   ├── README.txt
    │   ├── menu/
    │   │   ├── header.png
    │   │   └── icon.png
    │   └── mods/
    │       ├── some mod
    │       ├── some other mod 
    │       └── ...
    ├── minimal/
    │   ├── game.conf
    │   ├── menu/
    │   │   ├── background.png
    │   │   ├── icon.png
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── mods/
    │       ├── some mod
    │       ├── some other mod
    │       └── ...
    ├── my_game/
    │   ├── game.conf
    │   ├── minetest.conf
    │   ├── README.txt
    │   ├── license.txt
    │   ├── menu/
    │   │   ├── background.png
    │   │   ├── footer.png
    │   │   ├── header.png
    │   │   ├── icon.png
    │   │   ├── overlay.png
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── mods/
    │       ├── license.txt
    │       ├── some mod
    │       ├── some other mod
    │       └── ...
    └── some more games

Games

Contents