I'm a builder and these shapes are exactly what builders need, filling in some of the glaring holes that moreblocks left us with. But there's a catch - There are roughly 120 additional nodes that will be registered for every full node added to the circular saw using this mod. That adds up quick... Registering 100 nodes for the circular saw will already add 12,000 (+100) different nodes to your world, at which point you have to start thinking about minetest's hardcoded node limit. And builders tend to work with much more than 100 nodes :)
Frankly, Minetest needs better support for node shapes, either putting them in a new param (may increase world sizes) or un-hardcoding the node limit (also would increase world sizes), or some other method that tries to reduce the damage the change might cause. This mod does everything it should, and is super useful, but it will hardly get use in public servers currently (and local worlds) simply because of Minetest's node limits!
The best 32x texture pack for Minetest currently, if you ask me. Wow! Sirrobzeroone has really found the magic of 32x, while keeping things altogether looking mostly consistent and visually appealing. It's not perfect, and there's definitely some "rough edges" in places, but it's shoulders higher than anything else other 32x packs I've seen have to offer. Plus, the list of supported mods is larger than probably any other texture pack currently, just to top it off. This deserves many more eyeballs than it is getting!
Imagine showering a bride with rice, shooting confetti over a party, or even throwing hundreds of pies at a griefers face! All of that is feasibly possible with this mod, and in a clear-cut, easy-to-understand way.
This mod only improves when used in conjunction with mesecons: now you can detect for certain players before activating the particlespawner or make it only spawn particles when certain in-world objectives are achieved!
This is really a fantastic mod since Wuzzy took over on the development. At first look, it can come across as a oddly small collection of random decor blocks, but, as I have seen on servers, this actually takes care of most decor needs, and adds some awesome functionalities along with it. Less is more, I guess? The textures are consistent and fit minetest well, and everything actually works without random crashes (unlike the old version). Chess finally works, most importantly, and it looks and feels like an actual implementation. Wow!! Other than the fact that my opponent takes too long! Totally not hinting you to add timers... :-)
The more detailed decor mods, like Homedecor or Multidecor are too bloaty and the items will kill your FPS unless you've got a supercomputer and the latest NVIDIA graphics card (maybe slightly overexaggerated). This mod is lightweight and won't be hard on compromised clients. Recommended, especially for multiplayer situations!
In Tunnelers' Abyss, we have somewhat fixed this problem by aggressively adding usages to many crops, such as reduction for elemental compounds which in turn can be used to make other useful items, many extraction recipes to various dyes (added by technic), and mobs which can only be tamed with various farming items. If you're a player on this server, you actually do want to have a farm with many types of crops as you proceed up the line of innovation. It's important and useful!
But it always comes back to the food. At some point, everyone has their own food source that works well for them, there's no incentive to start making another food. I think that's something that will plague every single farming mod that doesn't invent some awesome background magic that somehow makes the players want to eat a diverse selection of foods, or change the satiation logic.. I think we're kinda stuck. Just my two cents :)
The diverse selection of crops in this mod, combined with a plethora of food items, keeps you entertained for quite a while. Not all of the crops are so easy to find, so some of them double as collector's items :-)
The texture style isn't top-notch or anything, but those textures have improved a lot in the past few years. There's a bigger problem though, which is simply that this mod doesn't have enough uses for it's items. Many of the crops only have a single usage, or some even have absolutely no usages, at the time of writing. For many users of the mod, there is absolutely no mechanic to encourage them to farm new crops, or to get new food items, because all these items work for the same purpose of effectively filling the food bar in different ways. So this mod can often play as more of a decoration mod than anything else in many servers, because there just aren't enough built-in usages for crops. I'd love to see this situation improve, but it's hard to know where to start. (more about that in the comments)
I do recommend this though, because this is the most commonly used mod for farming, and for a reason - it's interesting enough to keep people expanding their farms for a while. X Farming is the other option I would recommend, and it's gaining popularity and useability, but both are a bit bloaty and a lot of items just don't have a lot of good uses. Pick your poison.
Okay, I do use minetest 5.6.0 (latest version of xdecor though) - maybe there is a problem there? I have no idea where to refind the crash logs but they were mostly to do with the computer (singleplayer mode). I'm not sure exactly what triggered it, but getting into complicated positions usually did the trick. Fluxionary has also had a lot of problems with the chess, he removed it from his server for that reason. My home server tried reverting to a previous version that was tested and was more stable, but castling didn't work at all, so we gave up on that too.
I think the reason this version seems much more polished is that it has all the modern chess rules (except 50 move rule as mentioned in the OP, which seems pointless), and you can click on a piece to see all legal moves. It doesn't have a move log like the xdecor version does, though.
Try taking an opponent's piece in the xdecor version- it will often take a few attempts before it actually 'takes' for me. Maybe this only happens in 5.6.0?
Yeah, I thought the "forest still needs time to heal" thing was lame as well, once I saw that it wasn't healing at all. That's a good explanation as long as the fog starts lifting, the areas start to get a little brighter, gradually, but I understand time constraints were at play here.
I'm kinda disappointed that this didn't make the top 3, but I have the idea that it might spur you to make an even better game next Jam, so maybe that is a good thing? :D
A treat for completionists, basically. ;-)
I don't remember seeing a max value of the healing orbs? - In Glitch you know how many electrons are in your sector, but I didn't see anything like that in Shadow Forest.
Yes- There are just far too many bugs in xdecor chess. My server just gave up on it a while ago. Sometimes you can't even make legal moves unless you make the move like 5 times and it finally executes, and there's also hidden crashes. The computer (Singleplayer mode) is even weaker than this one.
Of course, what this mod (and xdecor chess!) really needs is timers :) Congratulations on winning third place!
This is a discovery/parkour puzzle, with time travel and time modification. This runs similar to a very difficult Inside the Box entry, for those who have played those - it even looks exactly like one! Finding and recovering artifacts is hard, and there aren't a lot of hints, so you've gotta think outside the box :) As a general hint, you need to try to toggle between past and present to get to locations and find objects, but also, modify the present to find some (a lot) of them. Plants grow over time, so they can help you climb nodes or break nodes as long as they don't get destroyed in the timeline. There aren't a lot of sounds, and the background music got a bit annoying, so I just muted the game.
You can't timetravel if a node is going to be at your position in the new time. But you can get around that (usually) by sneaking to the edge of a node and then time travelling - maybe a bug. It helped me to figure out what positions were going to be viable through the timeline though. Most of your time is going to be spent modifying the timeline with plants, because just time travelling won't get you very far.
For how much effort this puzzle was to solve, I was almost expecting a resolving ending, but the ending didn't make sense to me and didn't feel complete. After the end scene, I was teleported back to the castle to see the same entities, which confused me further. If this counts as unexpectedness, I guess the author gets points. I haven't found all the artifacts yet, they're just incredibly hard to locate and recover!
Despite some shortcomings, this is one of my favorites in the Game Jam, and I hope it continues to get development. It's a really tough puzzle with amazing logic and physics, and I like tough puzzles. :) Recommended - but don't give up easy or this game isn't for you!
One extra note: I was kinda disappointed by the ending. The shadows still spawn, and there appears to be no increase in light. I'm pretty sure this was due to limited time(?), but I'd sure like to see an ending where things are a bit more resolved! :)
I managed to find the exit just by moving around arbitrarily. It took me a few seconds each time, because I didn't remember which way it was, but it wasn't hard :)
Another incredible game by Wuzzy - The storyline is great, the assets and textures are great, and it has a unique feel that makes the game fascinating. The sounds are awesome. Although this doesn't compare with Glitch for me (which is my personal favorite Minetest mini-game at the time of writing), this is entirely different, focusing on defeating darkness with weapons, skills, and collectables.
The mechanics are pretty simple at first - find vases to get healing essence, and kill mobs to get shadow fragments, then upgrade at your local campfire. The strategy that works best seems to be running mad until you find a house with some amount of protection - then you can kill lots of mobs, gain shadow fragments, and upgrade at the nearby campfire. Unfortunately, I think this bypasses a lot of the fun of the game, which may have been geared more towards exploration, but it's often instead dodging mobs wildly and harvesting them in arbitrary ways. Light crystals are pretty rare, you've got to look for them hard! You need three of them to break the barrier which will eventually lead you to the boss. As the game progresses, it goes from a collecting game to a exploration game, looking for the answers and the boss, and exploring pretty amazing places (all the meanwhile dodging mobs). Once you've got most of the upgrades, you won't have so much trouble with the mobs, but you'll still have to run. The boss is super difficult, and it took me a few tries to defeat him. Keep yourself moving as much as possible and keep throwing light.
As for unexpectedness, I can't really say I was too surprised by anything in particular - Despite that, this is my personal pick for best game of the 2023 Game Jam, and I hope it wins, because it simply feels the most complete and polished of all the games, despite the mobs :-)
You're welcome! I didn't understand that that guy was still there at the end though. I thought he would be dead now! There's a few explanations for how that could have happened though...
This game has literally nothing to do except pushing a lever. But then there's this chat simulation... and it was so amusing, the game suddenly seemed to be well worth the time. Somehow, despite no gameplay, this is actually pretty fun. And the textures are great, IMO. I debated with myself whether I should really recommend a game with absolutely no gameplay that doesn't even feel like Minetest material, but this is simply the most amusing game I've seen in the Game Jams. Recommended - it won't take you long to win (or even lose :-) ), it's worth a download.
You need to recover a crystal and bring it back to it's origin to light up the world again. This is a parkour/maze/combat game in one, which is easily finished, but it's a lot of fun to play and feels mostly complete. The gameplay and characters are pretty good and the music fit well. The plot twist at the end was very unexpected and caught me totally offguard - I only barely survived because I hadn't farmed the health powder enough earlier on, I just jumped over the ants many times. The wand is completely intuitive: The "Orange" function of the wand makes you glide in the vector that you are travelling in for a limited time, the "Blue" function gives you the ability to throw blue damage balls at enemies, and the "Green" function shrinks you. Once you get the hang of it, you can solve the levels somewhat proficiently: it does take some time to get used to it though. My main complaint would be that it felt a bit short - I completed it in 30 minutes, but it felt like it could use a few more levels that explain the theme better. For a short playthrough, this game is fantastic - recommended.
Thank you for the detailed response! Yes, I figured the reasons for the bot behaviour would be something like that - perhaps in a future version you could finetune the thinking time for the bot, for "higher rated" bots? I would be absolutely thrilled to see those things implemented (and most importantly the timer, of course) :) - And yeah, I was just curious if the rendition of Moonlight Sonata was actually played & recorded, because I enjoy playing that song too. Not a problem at all, great job on this game!!
Thanks for the response - Yes, I figured there were some time restraints going on here, it's still an impressive game though and was quite entertaining. Maybe the speedrun thing should be under a spoiler, haha, but it's very good to hear that the puzzles will be required to solve the game in the future! I'll be happy to update my review when that does happen :)
And sorry, it looks like I selected "Negative" but I really meant to select "Neutral". Updated.
There's simply not enough 'gameplay' for this to be worthwhile yet - the mini-games included are cool, but are repetitive and aren't going to keep you interested for very long.
Ideally, the ability to create programs and coding IN the operating system would make this a very entertaining game for computer geeks. But as it is now, it's basically a rad-looking interface that doesn't actually serve any purposes (except the mini-games maybe).
Side note: Digiline touchscreens from the digilines and digilinesplus mods can create a real operating system that can actually be modified by the client, if you work hard enough at it!
Unrelated, but did you play and record the moonlight sonata rendition in the main menu (Since you said everything was created by you)? That's pretty impressive if so - just wanted to give credit where credit is due :)
This is not a game, and doesn't have any gameplay - but this could be a very interesting mod in the future if properly assembled!
Effectively, this is a proof of concept for dynamic mapgens, but there are only two choices for what is to happen to the mapgen, and a block modifier actively changes the world based on your choice. It's cool, but it's very useless.
If you're looking for a way to customize your world's biomes (among other things), try Josselin's mod Unilib. It's powerful, easy to modify, and supports (by containing) over 200 minetest mods.
As mentioned in Zughy's review, this is effectively a 3-step tutorial with some funny credits, and the textures aren't exactly glamorous either. As it is currently, it's not worth your time, other games will check wisdom better!
Didn't expect to see a Chess game in this year's Game Jam, that's for sure! This is the most polished chess implementation I've seen yet in minetest and proved to be a lot of fun. Normal chess rules are all here, unlike the other minetest implementations: en passant logic, three-fold repetition, and correct castling! Only one thing I didn't notice was the 50-move rule, but that's not really necessary in a minetest subgame. I would absolutely love to see a Fischer Chess implementation in this game (with proper castling) someday :) Multiplayer chess is pretty cool, but it really needs timers to be at it's full potential, since your opponent can just stall forever. I think it would improve the game a lot if that was added.
The bot itself is OK and interesting to play with, but it's not very smart and could use a lot of work: it is extremely materialistic, and simply can't see most checkmating attacks and pin attacks. It makes decent, solid moves in the opening, but if you set up a decent attack against it, you've basically won the game (Also, it always picks the same opening, which is a little dissapointing). It will usually always take material over a decent defense, which means that if you find tricks in the position, you're going to have a very high success rate. The bot also, most of the time, can't convert winning positions: even if the bot has many pawns and pieces and all you've got is a king, it still somehow manages to find a way to repeat moves and end in a draw. It can definitely win though - if there's a checkmate in immediate sight, it can usually find it.
The unexpected changes to the board were pretty awesome to play a game with, although they could use some highlighting, as I had to search the board for what happened many times. Maybe a 3 second highlighting of the affected pieces would improve the gameplay.
Overall, I really enjoyed this, and I think it's currently the best minetest has to offer in terms of chess.
I can't bring myself to give this a positive recommendation, despite how much I like the assets and storyline. It's vaguely backrooms-y and the darkness combined with the textures and robots is mildly terrifying. Every time you exit the game and reload, you save your progress but you have to go through the same intro again and lose your old position. Not a big deal though. The problem is that there is simply not much gameplay - the robot control panels are awesome, and solving the robot puzzles was quite entertaining, but they don't actually unlock anything or serve any purpose at all. Your job is simply to get a "robot_2" in a short amount of time, which looks like a black tank, and to find the exit door and right-click on it. This can be done in less than 2 minutes if you're into speedruns, and I know because I tried :) There's also certain places that if you fall into, you won't be able to get out. All the puzzles work, you just need to use the NE/NW/SW/SE direction indicators.
Some more sounds are needed, as there appears to be only one sound during the course of the game (when you finish the game), and making the puzzles actually unlock sectors or switches would be satisfying and justify solving the puzzles! I see there are also some empty rooms on the map, which may have been part of the story, but weren't completed in time(?) - this game is probably still a WIP, so I'm excited to see what will become of it.
You can truly embrace and discover air like you never have before. What's there not to like, I guess?
This is a negative review simply because there is no gameplay, absolutely nothing to do but fall and enjoy air. Anyone who downloads this might be in for a major disappointment, because Air Game is a legendary title. Take the title 100% literally, and you understand now!
Also give this man bonus points for unexpectedness :-)
When coupled with an automation mod like pipeworks, this mod becomes very powerful: a simple machine can be made to process dirt into bones automatically, and then more machines can be made to autofarm crops or flowers. Even disregarding automation, this mod serves an extremely valuable purpose, allowing builders or landscapers to grow flowers and crops immediately in their surroundings with bonemeal or mulch, or to grow a tree instantly. This mod has become a staple on many servers nowadays, and for good reason!
I played this game for almost a week when the Tunnelers' Abyss main server was down, and it can definitely be quite addicting at times! Learning 3D minesweeper itself was a bit of a challenge, it's quite a bit harder than 2D minesweeper. But once you get the hang of it, you'll only get faster and faster. A similar 3D minesweeper game can be accessed at http://egraether.com/mine3d/ which helped me to understand it a bit better.
Right-click a block to mark it as a bomb, dig it if you think it isn't one.
Sometimes you can come to a place where there is no continuation without a 'guess' (or at least I thought so), especially on corners - you'll just have to take your chances, or find a different place where there is a solution. Large "cave"-like expanses can open up where bombs don't occur, creating some 2D-like environments where solving is particularly easy, and a large number of solve-able 'exits'.
Highly recommended if you're looking for a mind challenge. Now we just need 4D chess!
This may be a biome-adding mod, but get ready for a whole bunch of items you didn't expect- this one is pretty well rounded and adds an awful lot. It can definitely feel a bit bloaty at times, but there's a lot of upside.
The biomes themselves are innovative and fun to explore, except the mushroom biome (my opinion), which seems too repetitive to be interesting after a while. The swamps and volcanoes are some of my favorite. If that mushroom biome or anything else ends up being more common than you'd like it, you'll need to edit the mod settings.
Plenty of feature-rich items, or nodes with a lot of aesthetic appeal, make this worth the "bloat". The crystal tools work like Silk Touch in Minecraft, as well as providing a good reason to find the rare Crystal biome. The added fishing api doesn't seem to fit the mod at first look, but it has differing drops per-biome (fitting it into ethereal's biomes nicely), multiple species of fish, and a few interesting food items. This mod also offers a way to make infinite mese, although it's tough enough that only an experienced user could make a proper farm (and they get big!).
The mapgen is also quite light-weight compared to other biome adding mods. So - if you can handle the extra item count and like what you see - this is for you! Recommended.
Another awesome biome, keep them coming! This particular jungle feels a lot like Malaysia to me, I can imagine some tapirs/sumatran rhinoceroses roaming near the Rafflesias :)
This looks the best in combination with Liil's texture pack.
The TNT also ends up being pretty useless, because you'd need an awful lot of them, as well as a lot of food (because it damages you each time you use it) to actually tunnel through a wall. And by that time, you'll be caught by guards anyways...
The 'exit' to the maze is just about everywhere on the edge of the maze, which is about 290x290 nodes. Unfortunately, this makes it quite easy to speedrun to an edge based on where you are. You always spawn at 140,140, which is roughly the center of the maze, but now you know you only have to go about 140-150 blocks in a certain direction to win. This knowledge helps an awful lot, because otherwise you can end up aimlessly wandering looking for some exit.
You win by just jumping out of the building, which is OK, but it doesn't feel like a proper ending. Even generating a treed forest around the jail would be an improvement, and then the bugs would be eliminated because the game could be won when the player steps on the grass.
To summarize, this is a neat maze that can be somewhat challenging, but it's lacking a lot of dynamic/interest and has a few bugs.
Gameplay consists of mostly using sprint to get away from the guards (they have decent pathfinding, so you can't just turn a corner and wait), and trying to collect items while you run. This can get rather boring and grind-ish, unless you understand how the game works.
Each map is different- every time you restart the game, you find yourself in a new map. Sometimes, you're unlucky and a guard is right next to you where you spawn ... that's annoying and probably a bug. Sometimes, you end up in a maze where you will meet 3 or 4 guards before you ever see an item chest, which will basically lead you to sprinting wildly and hoping for some breakthrough, which usually never comes. Sometimes, you find yourself in a maze where you gather 10+/20+ items before seeing a single guard, which makes the game too easy!
Stealth is not incorporated into this game, sadly. You can't try to sneak around the guards or anything, because they are programmed to 'see' players within a radius, so they can just see through walls. If the guards acted more human - i.e., they only remember where they saw you go, and they don't know where you are currently, it would add a dynamic of stealth to the game and make the game much more interesting. (example: turning three corners very quickly in an attempt to 'shake' off the guards)
In some maps, the best strategy is just to make a wild run for the exit without taking any items at all. In others, you're not going to find the exit quickly, and you need to find items and play it safe.
Remarkable texture pack- I've enjoyed this one for a long time because of it's consistency, beauty, and its support for so many mods, including ethereal, moretrees, and moreblocks, mods that I often come in contact with. Every single texture fits right into the style and makes a wonderful atmosphere.
I'm a builder and these shapes are exactly what builders need, filling in some of the glaring holes that moreblocks left us with. But there's a catch - There are roughly 120 additional nodes that will be registered for every full node added to the circular saw using this mod. That adds up quick... Registering 100 nodes for the circular saw will already add 12,000 (+100) different nodes to your world, at which point you have to start thinking about minetest's hardcoded node limit. And builders tend to work with much more than 100 nodes :)
Frankly, Minetest needs better support for node shapes, either putting them in a new param (may increase world sizes) or un-hardcoding the node limit (also would increase world sizes), or some other method that tries to reduce the damage the change might cause. This mod does everything it should, and is super useful, but it will hardly get use in public servers currently (and local worlds) simply because of Minetest's node limits!
The best 32x texture pack for Minetest currently, if you ask me. Wow! Sirrobzeroone has really found the magic of 32x, while keeping things altogether looking mostly consistent and visually appealing. It's not perfect, and there's definitely some "rough edges" in places, but it's shoulders higher than anything else other 32x packs I've seen have to offer. Plus, the list of supported mods is larger than probably any other texture pack currently, just to top it off. This deserves many more eyeballs than it is getting!
Imagine showering a bride with rice, shooting confetti over a party, or even throwing hundreds of pies at a griefers face! All of that is feasibly possible with this mod, and in a clear-cut, easy-to-understand way.
This mod only improves when used in conjunction with mesecons: now you can detect for certain players before activating the particlespawner or make it only spawn particles when certain in-world objectives are achieved!
This is really a fantastic mod since Wuzzy took over on the development. At first look, it can come across as a oddly small collection of random decor blocks, but, as I have seen on servers, this actually takes care of most decor needs, and adds some awesome functionalities along with it. Less is more, I guess? The textures are consistent and fit minetest well, and everything actually works without random crashes (unlike the old version). Chess finally works, most importantly, and it looks and feels like an actual implementation. Wow!! Other than the fact that my opponent takes too long! Totally not hinting you to add timers... :-)
The more detailed decor mods, like Homedecor or Multidecor are too bloaty and the items will kill your FPS unless you've got a supercomputer and the latest NVIDIA graphics card (maybe slightly overexaggerated). This mod is lightweight and won't be hard on compromised clients. Recommended, especially for multiplayer situations!
In Tunnelers' Abyss, we have somewhat fixed this problem by aggressively adding usages to many crops, such as reduction for elemental compounds which in turn can be used to make other useful items, many extraction recipes to various dyes (added by technic), and mobs which can only be tamed with various farming items. If you're a player on this server, you actually do want to have a farm with many types of crops as you proceed up the line of innovation. It's important and useful!
But it always comes back to the food. At some point, everyone has their own food source that works well for them, there's no incentive to start making another food. I think that's something that will plague every single farming mod that doesn't invent some awesome background magic that somehow makes the players want to eat a diverse selection of foods, or change the satiation logic.. I think we're kinda stuck. Just my two cents :)
The diverse selection of crops in this mod, combined with a plethora of food items, keeps you entertained for quite a while. Not all of the crops are so easy to find, so some of them double as collector's items :-)
The texture style isn't top-notch or anything, but those textures have improved a lot in the past few years. There's a bigger problem though, which is simply that this mod doesn't have enough uses for it's items. Many of the crops only have a single usage, or some even have absolutely no usages, at the time of writing. For many users of the mod, there is absolutely no mechanic to encourage them to farm new crops, or to get new food items, because all these items work for the same purpose of effectively filling the food bar in different ways. So this mod can often play as more of a decoration mod than anything else in many servers, because there just aren't enough built-in usages for crops. I'd love to see this situation improve, but it's hard to know where to start. (more about that in the comments)
I do recommend this though, because this is the most commonly used mod for farming, and for a reason - it's interesting enough to keep people expanding their farms for a while. X Farming is the other option I would recommend, and it's gaining popularity and useability, but both are a bit bloaty and a lot of items just don't have a lot of good uses. Pick your poison.
Yay!
Okay, I do use minetest 5.6.0 (latest version of xdecor though) - maybe there is a problem there? I have no idea where to refind the crash logs but they were mostly to do with the computer (singleplayer mode). I'm not sure exactly what triggered it, but getting into complicated positions usually did the trick. Fluxionary has also had a lot of problems with the chess, he removed it from his server for that reason. My home server tried reverting to a previous version that was tested and was more stable, but castling didn't work at all, so we gave up on that too.
I think the reason this version seems much more polished is that it has all the modern chess rules (except 50 move rule as mentioned in the OP, which seems pointless), and you can click on a piece to see all legal moves. It doesn't have a move log like the xdecor version does, though.
Try taking an opponent's piece in the xdecor version- it will often take a few attempts before it actually 'takes' for me. Maybe this only happens in 5.6.0?
Yeah, I thought the "forest still needs time to heal" thing was lame as well, once I saw that it wasn't healing at all. That's a good explanation as long as the fog starts lifting, the areas start to get a little brighter, gradually, but I understand time constraints were at play here.
I'm kinda disappointed that this didn't make the top 3, but I have the idea that it might spur you to make an even better game next Jam, so maybe that is a good thing? :D
I don't remember seeing a max value of the healing orbs? - In Glitch you know how many electrons are in your sector, but I didn't see anything like that in Shadow Forest.
Yes- There are just far too many bugs in xdecor chess. My server just gave up on it a while ago. Sometimes you can't even make legal moves unless you make the move like 5 times and it finally executes, and there's also hidden crashes. The computer (Singleplayer mode) is even weaker than this one.
Of course, what this mod (and xdecor chess!) really needs is timers :) Congratulations on winning third place!
lol
Fully agreed, was going to make a review but this summed it up better. +1
This is a discovery/parkour puzzle, with time travel and time modification. This runs similar to a very difficult Inside the Box entry, for those who have played those - it even looks exactly like one! Finding and recovering artifacts is hard, and there aren't a lot of hints, so you've gotta think outside the box :) As a general hint, you need to try to toggle between past and present to get to locations and find objects, but also, modify the present to find some (a lot) of them. Plants grow over time, so they can help you climb nodes or break nodes as long as they don't get destroyed in the timeline. There aren't a lot of sounds, and the background music got a bit annoying, so I just muted the game.
You can't timetravel if a node is going to be at your position in the new time. But you can get around that (usually) by sneaking to the edge of a node and then time travelling - maybe a bug. It helped me to figure out what positions were going to be viable through the timeline though. Most of your time is going to be spent modifying the timeline with plants, because just time travelling won't get you very far.
For how much effort this puzzle was to solve, I was almost expecting a resolving ending, but the ending didn't make sense to me and didn't feel complete. After the end scene, I was teleported back to the castle to see the same entities, which confused me further. If this counts as unexpectedness, I guess the author gets points. I haven't found all the artifacts yet, they're just incredibly hard to locate and recover!
Despite some shortcomings, this is one of my favorites in the Game Jam, and I hope it continues to get development. It's a really tough puzzle with amazing logic and physics, and I like tough puzzles. :) Recommended - but don't give up easy or this game isn't for you!
One extra note: I was kinda disappointed by the ending. The shadows still spawn, and there appears to be no increase in light. I'm pretty sure this was due to limited time(?), but I'd sure like to see an ending where things are a bit more resolved! :)
I managed to find the exit just by moving around arbitrarily. It took me a few seconds each time, because I didn't remember which way it was, but it wasn't hard :)
Another incredible game by Wuzzy - The storyline is great, the assets and textures are great, and it has a unique feel that makes the game fascinating. The sounds are awesome. Although this doesn't compare with Glitch for me (which is my personal favorite Minetest mini-game at the time of writing), this is entirely different, focusing on defeating darkness with weapons, skills, and collectables.
The mechanics are pretty simple at first - find vases to get healing essence, and kill mobs to get shadow fragments, then upgrade at your local campfire. The strategy that works best seems to be running mad until you find a house with some amount of protection - then you can kill lots of mobs, gain shadow fragments, and upgrade at the nearby campfire. Unfortunately, I think this bypasses a lot of the fun of the game, which may have been geared more towards exploration, but it's often instead dodging mobs wildly and harvesting them in arbitrary ways. Light crystals are pretty rare, you've got to look for them hard! You need three of them to break the barrier which will eventually lead you to the boss. As the game progresses, it goes from a collecting game to a exploration game, looking for the answers and the boss, and exploring pretty amazing places (all the meanwhile dodging mobs). Once you've got most of the upgrades, you won't have so much trouble with the mobs, but you'll still have to run. The boss is super difficult, and it took me a few tries to defeat him. Keep yourself moving as much as possible and keep throwing light.
As for unexpectedness, I can't really say I was too surprised by anything in particular - Despite that, this is my personal pick for best game of the 2023 Game Jam, and I hope it wins, because it simply feels the most complete and polished of all the games, despite the mobs :-)
You're welcome! I didn't understand that that guy was still there at the end though. I thought he would be dead now! There's a few explanations for how that could have happened though...
This game has literally nothing to do except pushing a lever. But then there's this chat simulation... and it was so amusing, the game suddenly seemed to be well worth the time. Somehow, despite no gameplay, this is actually pretty fun. And the textures are great, IMO. I debated with myself whether I should really recommend a game with absolutely no gameplay that doesn't even feel like Minetest material, but this is simply the most amusing game I've seen in the Game Jams. Recommended - it won't take you long to win (or even lose :-) ), it's worth a download.
You need to recover a crystal and bring it back to it's origin to light up the world again. This is a parkour/maze/combat game in one, which is easily finished, but it's a lot of fun to play and feels mostly complete. The gameplay and characters are pretty good and the music fit well. The plot twist at the end was very unexpected and caught me totally offguard - I only barely survived because I hadn't farmed the health powder enough earlier on, I just jumped over the ants many times. The wand is completely intuitive: The "Orange" function of the wand makes you glide in the vector that you are travelling in for a limited time, the "Blue" function gives you the ability to throw blue damage balls at enemies, and the "Green" function shrinks you. Once you get the hang of it, you can solve the levels somewhat proficiently: it does take some time to get used to it though. My main complaint would be that it felt a bit short - I completed it in 30 minutes, but it felt like it could use a few more levels that explain the theme better. For a short playthrough, this game is fantastic - recommended.
Thank you for the detailed response! Yes, I figured the reasons for the bot behaviour would be something like that - perhaps in a future version you could finetune the thinking time for the bot, for "higher rated" bots? I would be absolutely thrilled to see those things implemented (and most importantly the timer, of course) :) - And yeah, I was just curious if the rendition of Moonlight Sonata was actually played & recorded, because I enjoy playing that song too. Not a problem at all, great job on this game!!
Thanks for the response - Yes, I figured there were some time restraints going on here, it's still an impressive game though and was quite entertaining. Maybe the speedrun thing should be under a spoiler, haha, but it's very good to hear that the puzzles will be required to solve the game in the future! I'll be happy to update my review when that does happen :)
And sorry, it looks like I selected "Negative" but I really meant to select "Neutral". Updated.
There's simply not enough 'gameplay' for this to be worthwhile yet - the mini-games included are cool, but are repetitive and aren't going to keep you interested for very long.
Ideally, the ability to create programs and coding IN the operating system would make this a very entertaining game for computer geeks. But as it is now, it's basically a rad-looking interface that doesn't actually serve any purposes (except the mini-games maybe).
Side note: Digiline touchscreens from the digilines and digilinesplus mods can create a real operating system that can actually be modified by the client, if you work hard enough at it!
Unrelated, but did you play and record the moonlight sonata rendition in the main menu (Since you said everything was created by you)? That's pretty impressive if so - just wanted to give credit where credit is due :)
This is not a game, and doesn't have any gameplay - but this could be a very interesting mod in the future if properly assembled!
Effectively, this is a proof of concept for dynamic mapgens, but there are only two choices for what is to happen to the mapgen, and a block modifier actively changes the world based on your choice. It's cool, but it's very useless.
If you're looking for a way to customize your world's biomes (among other things), try Josselin's mod Unilib. It's powerful, easy to modify, and supports (by containing) over 200 minetest mods.
As mentioned in Zughy's review, this is effectively a 3-step tutorial with some funny credits, and the textures aren't exactly glamorous either. As it is currently, it's not worth your time, other games will check wisdom better!
Didn't expect to see a Chess game in this year's Game Jam, that's for sure! This is the most polished chess implementation I've seen yet in minetest and proved to be a lot of fun. Normal chess rules are all here, unlike the other minetest implementations: en passant logic, three-fold repetition, and correct castling! Only one thing I didn't notice was the 50-move rule, but that's not really necessary in a minetest subgame. I would absolutely love to see a Fischer Chess implementation in this game (with proper castling) someday :) Multiplayer chess is pretty cool, but it really needs timers to be at it's full potential, since your opponent can just stall forever. I think it would improve the game a lot if that was added.
The bot itself is OK and interesting to play with, but it's not very smart and could use a lot of work: it is extremely materialistic, and simply can't see most checkmating attacks and pin attacks. It makes decent, solid moves in the opening, but if you set up a decent attack against it, you've basically won the game (Also, it always picks the same opening, which is a little dissapointing). It will usually always take material over a decent defense, which means that if you find tricks in the position, you're going to have a very high success rate. The bot also, most of the time, can't convert winning positions: even if the bot has many pawns and pieces and all you've got is a king, it still somehow manages to find a way to repeat moves and end in a draw. It can definitely win though - if there's a checkmate in immediate sight, it can usually find it.
The unexpected changes to the board were pretty awesome to play a game with, although they could use some highlighting, as I had to search the board for what happened many times. Maybe a 3 second highlighting of the affected pieces would improve the gameplay.
Overall, I really enjoyed this, and I think it's currently the best minetest has to offer in terms of chess.
I can't bring myself to give this a positive recommendation, despite how much I like the assets and storyline. It's vaguely backrooms-y and the darkness combined with the textures and robots is mildly terrifying. Every time you exit the game and reload, you save your progress but you have to go through the same intro again and lose your old position. Not a big deal though. The problem is that there is simply not much gameplay - the robot control panels are awesome, and solving the robot puzzles was quite entertaining, but they don't actually unlock anything or serve any purpose at all. Your job is simply to get a "robot_2" in a short amount of time, which looks like a black tank, and to find the exit door and right-click on it. This can be done in less than 2 minutes if you're into speedruns, and I know because I tried :) There's also certain places that if you fall into, you won't be able to get out. All the puzzles work, you just need to use the NE/NW/SW/SE direction indicators.
Some more sounds are needed, as there appears to be only one sound during the course of the game (when you finish the game), and making the puzzles actually unlock sectors or switches would be satisfying and justify solving the puzzles! I see there are also some empty rooms on the map, which may have been part of the story, but weren't completed in time(?) - this game is probably still a WIP, so I'm excited to see what will become of it.
(READ COMMENTS for more info)
You can truly embrace and discover air like you never have before. What's there not to like, I guess?
This is a negative review simply because there is no gameplay, absolutely nothing to do but fall and enjoy air. Anyone who downloads this might be in for a major disappointment, because Air Game is a legendary title. Take the title 100% literally, and you understand now!
Also give this man bonus points for unexpectedness :-)
When coupled with an automation mod like pipeworks, this mod becomes very powerful: a simple machine can be made to process dirt into bones automatically, and then more machines can be made to autofarm crops or flowers. Even disregarding automation, this mod serves an extremely valuable purpose, allowing builders or landscapers to grow flowers and crops immediately in their surroundings with bonemeal or mulch, or to grow a tree instantly. This mod has become a staple on many servers nowadays, and for good reason!
All good ideas! I haven't worked on this project for a while, but I'll have to see if I can find some time to give it a few updates.
I played this game for almost a week when the Tunnelers' Abyss main server was down, and it can definitely be quite addicting at times! Learning 3D minesweeper itself was a bit of a challenge, it's quite a bit harder than 2D minesweeper. But once you get the hang of it, you'll only get faster and faster. A similar 3D minesweeper game can be accessed at http://egraether.com/mine3d/ which helped me to understand it a bit better.
Right-click a block to mark it as a bomb, dig it if you think it isn't one.
Sometimes you can come to a place where there is no continuation without a 'guess' (or at least I thought so), especially on corners - you'll just have to take your chances, or find a different place where there is a solution. Large "cave"-like expanses can open up where bombs don't occur, creating some 2D-like environments where solving is particularly easy, and a large number of solve-able 'exits'.
Highly recommended if you're looking for a mind challenge. Now we just need 4D chess!
I'd definitely be for that! :-)
This may be a biome-adding mod, but get ready for a whole bunch of items you didn't expect- this one is pretty well rounded and adds an awful lot. It can definitely feel a bit bloaty at times, but there's a lot of upside.
The biomes themselves are innovative and fun to explore, except the mushroom biome (my opinion), which seems too repetitive to be interesting after a while. The swamps and volcanoes are some of my favorite. If that mushroom biome or anything else ends up being more common than you'd like it, you'll need to edit the mod settings.
Plenty of feature-rich items, or nodes with a lot of aesthetic appeal, make this worth the "bloat". The crystal tools work like Silk Touch in Minecraft, as well as providing a good reason to find the rare Crystal biome. The added fishing api doesn't seem to fit the mod at first look, but it has differing drops per-biome (fitting it into ethereal's biomes nicely), multiple species of fish, and a few interesting food items. This mod also offers a way to make infinite mese, although it's tough enough that only an experienced user could make a proper farm (and they get big!).
The mapgen is also quite light-weight compared to other biome adding mods. So - if you can handle the extra item count and like what you see - this is for you! Recommended.
A setting would definitely clear up the controversy, +1 to that!
These are simple decorative nodes, they don't really need bloated functionality. Why the downvote?
Another awesome biome, keep them coming! This particular jungle feels a lot like Malaysia to me, I can imagine some tapirs/sumatran rhinoceroses roaming near the Rafflesias :)
This looks the best in combination with Liil's texture pack.
Excellent, will check it out!
The TNT also ends up being pretty useless, because you'd need an awful lot of them, as well as a lot of food (because it damages you each time you use it) to actually tunnel through a wall. And by that time, you'll be caught by guards anyways...
The 'exit' to the maze is just about everywhere on the edge of the maze, which is about 290x290 nodes. Unfortunately, this makes it quite easy to speedrun to an edge based on where you are. You always spawn at 140,140, which is roughly the center of the maze, but now you know you only have to go about 140-150 blocks in a certain direction to win. This knowledge helps an awful lot, because otherwise you can end up aimlessly wandering looking for some exit.
You win by just jumping out of the building, which is OK, but it doesn't feel like a proper ending. Even generating a treed forest around the jail would be an improvement, and then the bugs would be eliminated because the game could be won when the player steps on the grass.
To summarize, this is a neat maze that can be somewhat challenging, but it's lacking a lot of dynamic/interest and has a few bugs.
Gameplay consists of mostly using sprint to get away from the guards (they have decent pathfinding, so you can't just turn a corner and wait), and trying to collect items while you run. This can get rather boring and grind-ish, unless you understand how the game works.
Each map is different- every time you restart the game, you find yourself in a new map. Sometimes, you're unlucky and a guard is right next to you where you spawn ... that's annoying and probably a bug. Sometimes, you end up in a maze where you will meet 3 or 4 guards before you ever see an item chest, which will basically lead you to sprinting wildly and hoping for some breakthrough, which usually never comes. Sometimes, you find yourself in a maze where you gather 10+/20+ items before seeing a single guard, which makes the game too easy!
Stealth is not incorporated into this game, sadly. You can't try to sneak around the guards or anything, because they are programmed to 'see' players within a radius, so they can just see through walls. If the guards acted more human - i.e., they only remember where they saw you go, and they don't know where you are currently, it would add a dynamic of stealth to the game and make the game much more interesting. (example: turning three corners very quickly in an attempt to 'shake' off the guards)
In some maps, the best strategy is just to make a wild run for the exit without taking any items at all. In others, you're not going to find the exit quickly, and you need to find items and play it safe.
More in the comments ->
Remarkable texture pack- I've enjoyed this one for a long time because of it's consistency, beauty, and its support for so many mods, including ethereal, moretrees, and moreblocks, mods that I often come in contact with. Every single texture fits right into the style and makes a wonderful atmosphere.