Luanti
"An open source voxel game engine. Play one of our many games, mod a game to your liking, make your own game, or play on a multiplayer server. Available for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Android."
- The Game's Official Website (www.luanti.org)
In effect, Luanti is similar to Roblox, where it functions as a platform to make and play games instead of being a game by itself.
Various games and mods (which adds content to the game) have been developed for the platform which you can play, each varying in gameplay and design. Covering all of them would take a very long time, so this blog will only cover a few of them.
History
Luanti started development on October 2010. It was initially released as Minetest by the programmer Perttu Ahola, known better as celeron55 on the internet, as a way to challenge himself and to learn more about Minecraft during its alpha debut.
The experiment soon began to attract more users, and as the project grew, it would shift from just being a copy of Minecraft to a full-blown game engine with a unique identity, easy-to-use API for development, and a central library to find community content. Minetest would eventually focus on promoting community creations instead of being a game by itself.
In 2024, the developer of the game would change the game engine's name from Minetest (which itself comes from Minecraft + Test) to Luanti. Luanti is made from a combination of "Luonti", the Finnish word for "creation", and the game's programming language "Lua".
Installation
On Android, the game can be downloaded through the Google Play Store, F-Droid Main Repository, and Luanti's official GitHub page. As of 27 April 2025, the latest version of the engine is 5.11.0, though the games developed for the platform are developed and released separately. The engine is also available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and a few BSD systems.
During the game's installation, we did not experience any issues. Luanti by itself takes up 64 MB of our phone storage, though additional contents and worlds that are downloaded or created will require further additional storage.
Once Luanti is downloaded, you would need to download additional contents to start playing. Contents in the game are divided into three types: games, mods, and texture packs. More information about each type can be found in the customization section of this blog.
Gameplay
You can break and place blocks, though the specifics (such as which blocks are breakable, the tools needed to break them, or the result of breaking them) depend entirely on the game. You can also gather resources into the inventory and craft items, but the mechanics depend entirely on the specific game; some game, for example, has no crafting or even inventory systems at all.
By default, Luanti does not come with any computer-controlled characters or creatures, but many—if not most—games for Luanti come bundled with them, and many mods are made specifically made to add them.
Additionally, by default, the world in Luanti is also divided into biomes, often representing those in the real world like mountains, forests, caves, and so on. The amount and presence of biomes is entirely dependent on the installed games and mods.
Graphics
The graphics of the Engine's UI is mostly basic with in-game cloud moving in the backgound (though the games in Luanti can and often change this depending on the game itself), and the UI itself being mostly single color with gradient background. It was nothing to praise at, but it is serviceable.
The in-game graphics heavily depends on which Luanti game is played, as the models and textures of blocks in-game are provided by the individual game; the game would look different between Mineclonia and Asuna, for example.
Nevertheless, Luanti offers many global options to tweak the appearance of its games, mostly concerning camera movement, but it also offers options to enable waving plants, waving leaves, waving liquid, smooth lighting, undersampling (which renders the game at lower resolution to improve performance), and post-processing options (which is practically similar to shaders in Minecraft).
Audio
Luanti does not appear to have audio by default. However, individual games would usually come with audio for sound effects and occasionally music.
The audio design of Luanti will be covered separately in the review of its individual games.
Multiplayer
Players can play Luanti with multiple people both through the local network and on public servers.
When playing multiplayer, the game engine will automatically download the games and all the mods used in that server so that every player on the server has the same set of games and mods.
Luanti does not have a centralized account system. Instead, accounts are registered on a per-server basis. This means that you would create a separate account for every server you join. However, it appears that most server only require a name and password to register a new account; no need for emails or email confirmations. This also applies to local network multiplayer where accounts are stored per-world (so you'll need to create a separate account on every multiplayer world you play on). Of course, you can re-use the same name and password between different servers/worlds as long as the same name has not been registered on that server before.
To play together on a local server, you simply connect every device to the same local network (such as the same WiFi network) and then the host should host a server by ticking "host server" in the world select menu. The host then type name and password for their own account in the provided field.
Afterwards, other players would type the server's private IP address and server ports, then register an account on that server. Once the account is registered, the other players can simply re-login by choosing login. Keep in mind that if the host chooses a different world, then other players would need to create a new account for that world (as accounts are saved per-world).
Overall, online connectivity is fairly simple to set up as long as you know how to find local IP addresses. However, the fact that you need to create a different account for every world means that playing on multiple servers or even multiple worlds can be a hassle at the start (though once you have registered an account on that world, you simply need to login).
Unfortunately, multiplayer are often quite laggy, but this entirely depends on the server's content and the strength of the network; a fast internet and fewer or lighter contents in the game may reduce multiplayer lag.
Customizability
Luanti offers a plethora of customization for the player, both in terms of settings and custom content.
There are plenty of settings available for Luanti divided into categories and sub-categories. These include accessibility, controls, graphics, games, and mods. Some things you can customize include touchscreen layout, control behavior, viewing range, maximum FPS, undersampling, smooth lighting, waving nodes, post-processing, and many more. The player can also enable "show advanced settings" to see more advanced options for client settings, server security, mapgen (world generation), fonts, and so on.
You can also add many custom contents in the form of mods, games, and texture packs; in fact, that is necessary to get the game running as the game comes with no content by default. These contents are divided into three types:
- Games: Games are usually (but not always) a full-experience designed to be played as a single game, much like how games usually are. Under the hood, games are simply a collection of mods that are combined to create a gaming experience.
- Mods: Mods add content to the game and serve as the building blocks for the game. Though games come with their own set of mods, you can add additional mods into a game to add extra features or modify existing features.
- Texture Packs: Texture Packs change the appearance of nodes (blocks) in the game.
Verdict
Luanti is an fascinating platform. It is not a game by itself but rather a platform to build and play games on. It is perfect for those looking for free and open-source voxel games as plenty of them are made with Luanti. Luanti is also a great platform for those wanting to make such games.
While Luanti is not a game by itself, it has plenty of games and contents to offer which will be covered in their own separate posts. If you are interested in any of those games, then Luanti is a must to install.
External Links
- Official Website - Luanti's official web page
- Luanti ContentDB - Luanti's ContentDB (content database) page
- Google Play Store - Google Play Store listing of the game
- F-Droid Repo - F-Droid repository of the game developer's official website for the game
- Github - The game's source code
