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2010 · Luanti Team · Adventure · Simulation

Luanti

Luanti (formerly Minetest) is a near-infinite-world block sandbox game and a game engine, inspired by InfiniMiner, Minecraft, and the like.

Released: 1 October 2010
Platforms: Android FreeBSD Linux OpenBSD Windows macOS
Genres: Adventure Simulation
Developers: Luanti Team
Publishers: —
Perspective: First person Third person
Themes: Open world
Engine: Irrlicht Engine
Age ratings: ESRB T
Languages: English

About

Luanti (formerly known as Minetest) is a community-driven, free and open-source voxel game engine, available on various platforms. Originally, Minetest was a voxel game created in October 2010 by Perttu Ahola to explore the mechanics of Minecraft. Over time, Luanti evolved from the original Minetest game into a general game engine as developers integrated new features.

Luanti allows for the creation, development, and customization of games and modules (shortened to mods) using its Lua scripting system. Games are collections of mods that together establish a complete gameplay experience (by defining major content and behavior), while individual mods serve to modify or complement specific features within games, and may be added, replaced, or removed by players to customize them. To download games and mods, Luanti provides a built-in browser to access ContentDB, through which they can be installed.

Keywords

voxel
open-source
minecraft inspired

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

Luanti was originally released in November 2010 under a proprietary license. Shortly afterwards the license was changed to the GPL-2.0-or-later license. By agreement among major contributors, in June 2012 the project license was changed to LGPL-2.1-or-later, though at the time small parts still remained under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. In September 2013, the transition to LGPL-2.1-or-later was completed. While LGPL-2.1-or-later remains the main license for the Luanti engine, other free and open-source licenses are used for various other parts of the latest releases.

Finnish programmer Perttu Ahola (recognized as celeron55 or c55) was the only developer working on the project for about six months after its creation, until Ciaran Gultnieks started making code contributions in May 2011. The roster of contributors grew and changed over the years. As of January 2026, Luanti's GitHub repository has more than 800 contributors (870 as of September 2026). Project participants do not have set roles, but rather keep their activity within their respective areas of expertise. Perttu Ahola's role morphed over the years: whereas initially it was engine development, it is now mostly web-hosting and administration, assigning core developer, moderator, and other roles to people, as well as being the final word in cases where other developers are unable to render a decision.

Reception

Opensource.com listed Luanti at #1 in its "Best open source games of 2015", stating that it is maybe "the most complete alternative to Minecraft", and noted its expansibility, saying that it contains a user-friendly API for creating mods in Lua. PC Magazine listed Luanti among "The best Sandbox Creation Games for Minecraft Fans".