Mineclonia
"An unofficial Minecraft-like game for Minetest. Fork of MineClone 2 with focus on stability, multiplayer performance and features."
- Mineclonia on ContentDB
Mineclonia is a free and open-source game developed for Luanti. It is a fork of VoxeLibre. It is mostly based to VoxeLibre but with some differences, as listed on its description page. As with the game it is forked from, Mineclonia is primarily made to resemble Minecraft in terms of gameplay and mechanics.
Installation
Mineclonia can be downloaded directly within the Luanti app itself (there are also other methods, though they are much more complicated on Android). As of 27 April 2025, the latest version of the game was 0.114.0 which was the version we use for this review.
We installed the game directly from Luanti, and the installation process went smoothly. As with all Luanti games, the installation is as simple as clicking a few buttons, and soon we got the game running on Luanti.
During the download, the size of the download was 25.6 MB, and the whole game took 43.1 MB of our storage (not including the Luanti application itself or any worlds we created afterwards).
Gameplay
The gameplay of Mineclonia would not be too unfamiliar to those who have played Minecraft before: you play in a world full of blocks where you can explore the world at your leisure, and break or place almost anything in the game (provided that you have the right block or tool to place or break stuff if "creative mode" is disabled). If "enable damage" is enabled in Luanti settings, you will also have to fend yourself off from various hostile creatures and eat food to stay alive, as is expected for this kind of games. The game has no goals for the player, so it is up to you to do what you want.
For the most part, the gameplay is made to resemble Minecraft as much as possible. The game replicated many gameplay elements in ways that resemble Minecraft, including every single mobs from said game, the end dimension (complete with the ender dragon), the nether dimension (with the same biomes and features as Minecraft), the item enchanting system, and so on. It's clear that the game tries to replicate Minecraft beat-by-beat (or block-by-block), but the game is, of course, not entirely the same as Minecraft.
Aside from the graphics, some things in Mineclonia differs from Minecraft, notably the "physics" in the game, water-logging mechanic (which Mineclonia seemingly lacks), the world height and width limit, the design of generated structures in-game, and many others. The game's description lists most of the differences if you would like to read it up. For this reason, Mineclonia will probably not be a complete replacement of Minecraft to most people; however, it is impressive that the game feels similar to Minecraft despite being coded from scratch using an entirely different engine and programming language to Minecraft.
From the interview we conducted, our respondent said that the game design of Mineclonia was good overall. However, the ability to select blocks in the world by tapping on it with an empty hand was mentioned as annoying rather than helpful, and the lack of "water bucket clutch" (the use of a single water source block to prevent fall damage) was cited as another downside. Further, the design of Mineclonia's villages were mentioned to be more immersive than in Minecraft. Finally, the gameplay was said to be fun and not that hard to understand, especially to those who had played Minecraft before, but there were some quirks that set the game apart.
Performance-wise, the game runs well most of the time, though lag spikes occurs rather often and can last for quite a while. Still, it performs better than Minecraft most of the time when we test both on a very low-end Android phones. We also typically get higher framerates with Mineclonia compared to Minecraft despite the occasional lag spikes. However, most of the lags seem to occur on the server side rather than the client side. This makes the game appears to run well, but there are noticeable delays when placing and breaking blocks or opening and moving the inventory. This can sometimes ruin the experience, but the game runs well most of the time.
Graphics
The graphics design of the game was perhaps the biggest difference between Minecraft and Mineclonia. By default, the game's graphics are not the same as Minecraft, though it still followed the same concept. Thematically, it looks like the game is aiming for a more realistic look, akin to a survival game, though our respondent noted that the game is "not as realistic as Minecraft".
From our observation, we would say that the graphics are at the very least passable. It works for the game, and it looks professional enough to be in a finished product, though it may receive some polish. The textures would not look too out-of-place for a Minecraft texture pack.
However, the art quality (as our respondent noted) is not too appealing compared to Minecraft. The respondent cited that the game felt old-school like older video games.
The user interface of the game followed similar theming to Minecraft, though it was noticeably different (and the game creator said that they had no plans in making it any similar to Minecraft). It looked flatter overall but with similar vibe to Minecraft. Nonetheless, the user interface of the game resembled "Minecraft Java edition" more than Minecraft Bedrock edition", so people used to "Minecraft Bedrock" (which is ironically the only version of Minecraft available on Android) might find the game less familiar.
Audio
The sound effects of Mineclonia is overall fairly good. Most things in the game had sound effects corresponding to it (though our respondent cited that not all blocks have sound effects), and the sound effects works well for those situations. Notably, our respondent praised the sound of the spider because it resembles the sound of a tarantula.
Mineclonia does not have any music playing in the background. This is intentional; the creator did not include any background music in game to reduce the size of the game by half, which worked out well. Compared to VoxeLibre (the game Mineclonia is based on) which has background music, Mineclonia only takes up roughly half the size.
If you wish, you can optionally download a mod that adds background music back into the game from Luanti itself under the "mods" section. As it is not an official part of the game, it will not be covered here.
Multiplayer
Players can play Mineclonia with multiple people both through the local network and through public servers. The process of playing multiplayer is the same as playing multiplayer in any other Luanti game (see our coverage of Luanti for more details).
Overall, multiplayer works well in the game. Everything works exactly as expected, and most features in the game has been designed to accommodate multiplayer.
Unfortunately, multiplayer can be quite laggy and buggy, though this is not always consistent. Sometimes, multiplayer works well and smoothly, while other times, multiplayer barely works due to lag. From our experience, the issue seems to stem from the game engine itself as the same issue persists on nearly all but the simplest Luanti games.
Customizability
As Mineclonia is run with Luanti, you can customize quite a lot of things in Luanti's main settings. You can read our coverage on Luanti for more details.
However, Mineclonia adds many additional settings which is accessible from Luanti's settings menu. You can change the game's difficulty, world generation, features, mob caps, and various other aspects of the game.
In game, you can also customize your own appearance (or "skin") through the "player-specific settings" within the game's inventory menu. You can change your appearance in terms of the base skin color, headwears, hairs, eyes, mouths, tops, arm size, bottoms, and footwears. The options for these are quite limited, and you cannot add your own custom skins without using mods (which requires further set-up) or modifying the game files directly, both of which require quite a lot of technical skills and may be out of reach for most people.
The items in this image are all added through a mod (link)
Additionally, you can also install and use mods and texture packs easily from within the game itself, as is the case with all Luanti games. Our respondent cited that this is an amazing feature for the game, and the mods are rather "useful" (particularly the furniture mod). Unfortunately, Mineclonia is not compatible with most Luanti mods, and there were only very few mods confirmed to be compatible with Mineclonia as of the making of this blog. From our testing, mods not explicitly compatible with Luanti may still work, but there may be issues and glitches.
Verdict
Mineclonia is a rather interesting attempt at remaking Minecraft using Luanti's game engine. It is analogous to a Linux distro made to resemble Windows; it often looks and feels like its proprietary counterpart for the most part, but at its core, it is a different thing under the hood. It is not the same as Minecraft, and not everything in Minecraft is available in the game.
With that said, it is very much a viable alternative to Minecraft if you are looking for a free of charge, open-source, and privacy-friendly alternative of the hit sandbox game. Though, we recommend playing this game using a powerful phone or using a desktop for the best experience.
External Links
- ContentDB - Luanti ContentDB entry for the game
- Codeberg - The game's source code
- Classical Music - The mod which adds music to Mineclonia
- VoxeLibre Furniture and Decorations - The mod which adds furniture to VoxeLibre and Mineclonia
