Open-source voxel game engine, make your own game!

Report Share

Minetest

May, 25th 2025 - 15.9 MB - Open Source

Free Download

Security Status

Latest Version

Minetest 5.12.0 LATEST
Review by

Jack Taylor
Operating System

Windows 8 (64-bit) / Windows 10 (64-bit) / Windows 11
User Rating

Click to vote
Author / Product

The Minetest Team / External Link
Filename

luanti-5.12.0-win64.zip

Minetest is a free and open-source alternative to the popular multiplayer sandbox simulation title Minecraft, offering users access to creative gameplay features such as exploration, resource gathering, crafting, the building of structures, and an untold amount of emerging gameplay options that can appear during free flow online gameplay.

The game mimics a wide variety of features present in the original Minecraft title, only here, players are able to enjoy the world of Minetest for free, without the restrictions placed by distant dev teams.

Like the original title, Minetest can be played in multiple gameplay modes, and can be experienced in both offline solo and online play.

Main features

It was built from the ground up by the open-source focused Minetest Team of developers who have strived to provide a robust alternative to Minecraft without compromising on any gameplay element this influential game was introduced to the market in now distant 2011.

The voxel game includes both free-flowing exploration mode, survival mode, online cooperative game, and support for truly enormous maps that are 62,000 × 62,000 × 62,000 blocks in size. The functionality and visual presentation of the game can easily be enhanced with a wide array of community-created mods (such as high-quality texture packs).

As of early 2025, Minetest features an online library of over 2400 community source mods that are focused on game elements such as UI, combat, inventory management, game economy, sounds and music, online play, weapons, armors, the introduction of new minigames, and much more.

The open-source development approach has enabled players to take direct control over all aspects of this title, with built-in support for LUA API, several map generators, and access to the full open-source database.

PROS

Multiplayer functionality
Stunning game graphics
Lively and vivid color palettes
Soothing and calming gameplay experience

CONS

Multiplayer interactions may result in glitches
Absence of animals in the game
Repetitive gameplay mechanics
Limited interactions with in-game elements

Overall

Minetest is 100% FREE and can be played on all modern versions of Windows OS. Due to its simple visual style and optimized rendering, it can easily be enjoyed even on PCs with aging components, including old laptops.

Download Minetest Latest Version

Why is this app published on FileHorse? (More info)

What's new in this version:

Deprecations and compatibility notes:
- 5.12.0 is the first build to use SDL2 for window and input handling
- Key bindings (i.e. hotkeys) now use scancodes instead of printable characters. After updating Luanti, the user will be prompted to verify and/or reassign their game hotkeys.
- Saved worlds that were newly created (or migrated) by 5.12.0 can no longer be loaded by older versions. Worlds that are played over the network are unaffected.
- Details: instead of a unified pos field for x, y and z, the coordinates are now saved individually. This makes the database more accessible by external tools. (even more details]
- Lua API: The node/item registration functions now use stricter checks to avoid bad practices in mods.
- Lua API: “Perlin noise” (and related functions) were renamed to “Fractal value noise”. The old API remains accessible, yet without any deprecation warnings.
- Lua API: The tool capabilities of the optional "hand" inventory slot now entirely overwrite the default hand. For clients < 5.12.0, default groupcaps were not overwritten by the "hand" slot.
- Remote media: The client will now use GET requests to allow static media hosting. (details, writeup)

Client / Audiovisuals:
- Fix some models not rendering correctly as nodes
- Android: Fixed a bug where fonts could turn black when leaving a world while the app is running in the background
- Change of the default appearance: buttons now have a flat appearance
- Improved caching for generated textures
- Closing dialogues from the pause menu now shows the pause menu again
- Better texture filtering handling to avoid blurriness
- The keybinding dialogue is now implemented in Lua and can be found in the Settings dialogue
- Main menu: The SDL version is now shown in the “About” tab
- Main menu: new “Reviews” tab for ContentDB entries
- The inventory now animates animated nodes
- Many
- Dynamic media is again properly cached on client-side
- Android: new interaction modes
- Invalid mods are no longer listed in the mod selection
- Z-fighting fixes for certain node
- Sneak and Aux1 toggle mode setting
- Removed broken fall bobbing effect
- New Android setting defaults related to the view range
- Fixed fallback fonts not being used when the server provided custom fonts
- Fixes dynamic shadows performance regression
- This can be tweaked using the setting performance_tradeoffs.
- Improved main menu server list behavior

World / Server / Environment:
- Improved mapblock load/save performance
- More
- Server texture packs are now documented in doc/texture_packs.md
- Reduced network traffic for some pre-join data for clients >= 5.12.0
- /msg now returns an echo of the sent contents
- Decoration placement performance optimization
- IPv6 is now enabled by default
- More accurate collision code
- load_mod_* = false lines are no longer written to world.mt

Script API / Modding:
- glTF models: Local transforms no longer affect a skinned mesh. This bug used to cause wrong rendering.
- Tip: To avoid the bug on older Luanti client versions, simply remove the offending local transforms.
- You can use glTF validator to check whether your models are affected. The NODE_SKINNED_MESH_LOCAL_TRANSFORMS warning should not appear.
- Fix visual_scale not applying to skeletally animated meshes when used for nodes
- New formspec element allow_close[<bool>] to prevent formspecs from closing
- This only works for clients >= 5.12.0
- Various API documentation improvements
- Fixed LBMs sometimes not being executed on newly generated mapblocks
- New function table.copy_with_metatables
- core.item_drop now returns the spawned obj
- New visual = "node" option for entities to make it look like a regular node.
- Clients prior to 5.12.0-dev cannot see this entity.
- The builtin falling node entity was converted too.
- InvRef:remove_item now allows filtering by metadata
- Basic API to restrict the available camera modes

Misc / Maintenance:
- MacOS now uses SDL2 by too by default
- Various mapblock-related optimizations
- Many fixes and improvements for the OpenGL code
- Server/Client settings are now annotated more clearly
- Other error/crash fixes
- Various build fixes and updates
- Unittest additions
- SDL input corrections, fixes
- Various code cleanups and corrections