Luanti (formerly known as Minetest) is an open-source game engine allowing to play Voxel1 games, in single and multiplayer mode, locally or with a dedicated server, all while optimizing resource usage !
Download : https://www.luanti.org/downloads/
That means Luanti uses the Minecraft concept and aesthetics, but with a totally different build.
While Minecraft's code is closed-source and proprietary (in theory anyway), Luanti is free and open-source. Moreover, Minecraft has been famous for being a Java game (you can see this in the early versions), which implies that you need to load the JRE2 to play the game, Luanti is natively written in C++ and uses Lua scripts, which makes it lightweight and easy on CPU.
(Luanti's code is also simplified, and has better performance).
But if Luanti is just a game engine, how do we use it ?
Until recently, Luanti was bundled with Minetest Game (MTG), which looks like "golden age" Minecraft versions (before the hunger bar in beta-1.8). And the result is quite good, as the game is lightning fast and reactive. (You can still install MTG, just it's bare bones, no monsters, only basic features.)
He buildeth a temple on the sacred mountain.
The world generation uses Perlin algorithms3, creating vast and logical terrains, depending on the settings you use, you can get mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, or randomized fractal worlds. There are many settings, as the user can choose which biomes to generate, but also climate and village generation. The v5 mode is perhaps the most interesting of all as it gives birth to spectacular terrains that look completely different from the original Minecraft worlds.
Fractals maps are strange but mathematical and rational.
While MintestGame is funny, it can get old fast, as it was only intended to be a bland base for modding. That's why it's advised to add mods to it, like monsters or animals to start hunting and fighting !
Other games are available for Luanti : Mineclonia, VoxeLibre (very close to the original Minecraft experience), Backrooms Test (Yeah, like the TikTok Backrooms but you're exploring them), Repixture (a neolithic survival game, quite interesting).
Lots of mods, games and texture packs are available in the home screen.
All games, mods and texture packs can be installed directly from the game interface, there is a regularly updated catalog available, and the setup is one-click simple. Then in another menu you choose which mod you want to toggle on or off.
The undeniable strength of Luanti is its light weight, as well as its free cost and cross-platform portability. It can run on nearly all operating systems, Android, Linux, Windows, MacOs, FreeBSD.
In LAN mode, setting up multiplayer is extremely easy, you just have to tick a box to allow other players on the local network to join.
It gets a bit more complicated to host a server on the Internet, like opening router ports, but you can already join active servers from the Luani menu.
As of 2025, the community is buzzing and active, lots of servers are available. As always in open-source software, many Germans are here, but also Russians, Americans and French !
Luanti, international friendship !
Much more than a free Minecraft clone, Luanti and its many games are giving us an alternate experience in Voxel gaming. What can we do but promote such initiatives, so that the concept born around 2009 doesn’t stagnate, but stays alive and keeps on providing new experiences.
Minecraft is often criticized for its lack of listening towards the players and community, for example removing popular features to please a minority of fans. With Luanti, each fan is free to create his own game and mods, as long as he has the technical skills to do so, but Lua is honestly an easy programming language to learn.
For example, Mineclone2, one of the most popular and fully-featured games of Luanti, has been forked, giving birth to both VoxeLibre and Mineclonia.
The first one being more featured, but a bit heavier, while Mineclonia is lightweight and has better performance, at the cost of not including a soundtrack for example.
Repixture, of which we talked before, is another good example, as he offers us a world at the same time familiar and new. Most of the inhabitants are peaceful, and all crafts are limited to low-technology.4. You can also barter with NPCs5, scattered across a huge map that looks like a prehistoric Eden.
Mineclonia has a stronger RPG side, with exp and hunger bars.
While Minecraft gave rise to a new game current (not exactly, see Infiniminer6), Luanti gives players the initiative to pursue its evolution and future !
Backrooms test is plain scary…
Link : installing Luanti !
https://www.luanti.org/downloads/
Good game everyone !
- « Volume-pixel » it means world built on a three-dimensional grid, where each element has specific coordinates in this grid, e.g.: x=255, y=255, z=3Back.
- Java runtime environment, allows to run apps built with Java. Back.
- A big difference with Minecraft, "Perlin noise" is used to create randomized terrains with mountain ranges and cave systems. Back.
- Low-tech means all the simple and efficient technology that we use everyday without noticing it, like making a fire.Back.
- Non-playable characters. Back.
- Infiniminer, a voxel game, was one of Notch's inspiration to create Minecraft. Back.