Technically Luanti isn’t a Linux-exclusive game, but it is open-source and I am running it on Linux natively (EndeavourOS, which is based on Arch!)
I have tried out Asuna and Mineclonia, two of the most popular survival games on Luanti. The screenshots are all from Asuna, as that was the one I enjoyed playing the most. Mineclonia is trying its best to replicate Minecraft, meaning you become more critical of things that are a bit different (a little like how people often complain more about Windows clone Linux distros vs ones that are doing their own thing), but I think Asuna was a more enjoyable experience because there were a lot of improvements to the gameplay over Minecraft.
For example, the 3x3 crafting grid is in your inventory in Asuna, so you don’t need to bring crafting tables everywhere! There’s also a built-in recipe list, and it’s actually super useful as you can also see the recipes a certain item is used in when you double click, so if you selected cobblestone, it would show you the pickaxe recipe, stairs recipe, etc. Sprinting in Asuna is very speedy too, apparently it’s a 100% speed increase, which is kind of insane, but it does deplete your hunger very quickly. One more thing about the UI, I also like that the tooltips of the items show you their properties (like bounciness or durability). I’m a bit puzzled by the “research” tab though, it seems to eat an item and tells me the item group (which seems like useless information unless I’m missing something? There’s also a level indicator which gains xp if you feed multiple of the same item, not sure what that’s about)
There’s also more mobs, more blocks (especially the decorative kind, there was a lot more variants on the different types of stone for example), and lots more biomes as well. It feels like some sort of modded Minecraft where you have a bunch of new bits to explore again, and the terrain generation is more interesting as well! In my little base, I used “chrysoprase”, which is a green stone, and it’s a bit like deepslate or blackstone in Minecraft where you can use it in place of cobblestone in recipes, and you can make walls, bricks, etc. In fact, all the stone variants (of which there were many, including different coloured granites, the bright green chrysoprase, dark green jade, and probably lots more others I haven’t discovered) can be used like this, while in Minecraft that isn’t the case.
There are even plenty of new animals, in particular I love that birds spawn flying in the sky! The main hostile mobs I encountered were slimes, and there were many variants with different properties. For example, aquatic slimes have a slight glow, while poison slimes leave damaging goo on the floor. It’s a bit like that colourful slime mod for Minecraft where you can get all sorts of colours of slime for your builds! I also noticed that some of the slimes stole my items, and that they drop them once I kill them (accompanied by a delightful squish animation), which is also new!
It’s pretty cool how you can install mods super easily in Luanti, though Asuna already includes a lot of the mods by default. I also like that it’s super easy to set up multiplayer, it’s just a checkbox to host a temporary server (and I believe you can set up an always-on server as well)
There are some “missing” bits though. My main gripe is that there is no swimming in Asuna by default, making crossing water quite difficult. There is a mod that adds swimming animations, but they don’t increase speed and are quite buggy as well. Additionally, there are some bugs, as chickens have repeatedly disappeared in front of me. No idea why, and it’s only once I have them safe in my pen! The pathfinding of the animals is also not as good, the chickens can’t go around the open fence gate door when following the seeds. You also won’t get compatibility with all the existing Minecraft worlds, mods, and shaders, but that’s to be expected. I play with shaders in Minecraft sometimes so that is something I miss. There is native controller support in Luanti as well, and in Java edition Minecraft, that requires a mod like Controlify!
I don’t have much else to complain about though, it’s simply really fun to try something new and fresh once in a while. If you have any questions, let me know!
p.s. does anyone know what the “research” thing does in Asuna? There’s not much documentation on the game online (another upside for Minecraft, there is a VAST swath of information online about every little feature)
I just downloaded the Flatpak and its surprisingly easy. I thought there would be some initial configuration or so, don’t know why I was expecting that to be honest. And there are lot of “games” available; I only expected a Test Game to be available. Why are these downloadable games so small actually? I’ve downloaded a tutorial, which in my opinion should be starred too, as it was on page two or so.
So many questions. Sorry, it’s just surprising to me. The only time I ever played Minecraft (maybe 30 minutes or an hour) was on an emulator for Playstation 3, just to test if the emulator works. That’s the extend of my knowledge so far. :D To be fair, I’m also not the target group for this game. The only reason I try it out is to get an understanding how these games work and to have some basic knowledge of one of the most important and played games of all time.
understandable. in this game (mineclonia which is exactly the same as minecraft, content-wise) you collect resources and turn them into something else, quite a lot how real world (industry) works. there’s two types of raw resources: renewable and non-renewable resources. renewable means stuff like plants (yes, you can plant and harvest crops. use a hoe on a patch of dirt to turn it into farmland, then you can plant seeds there. they grow after a while) and animals (cows, chickens, etc which you can feed with grains etc) and monsters (these spawn in the environment, they can harm you if they touch you for example but you can kill them with a sword and they drop loot like zombie flesh, bones, spider eyes etc which are useful for some recipes).
and then there’s non-renewable resources which you can dug up from under the ground. stuff like raw iron ore, which you can then “cook” (smelt) in a furnace to get processed iron ingot, which you can then use in a lot of recipes to turn into other things, such as railways, wagons, pistons, etc.
there’s quite a lot of content actually but these are the basics.
The tutorial is helpful for basic controls, but nothing is too foreign and I was able to pick it up after looking at the hotkeys, remapping some of them to be more convenient (e.g. inventory to E, not I)
Because 1) most of the game logic is handled by the Luanti base (movement, inventory, rendering, that sort of stuff), and 2) modern games have gotten so bloated it makes relatively reasonably sized games look small