Disclaimer: This has been crossposted to a few communities. Please try to be respectful of other games and people within them. If you’re seeing this post, please reply to the ORIGINAL for more cohesive discussions. Apologies for such a long post, but it’s all written by me. A lot of this is explanation for the uninitiated for each community, so feel free to skip parts you understand.
A bit of context: Luanti (formerly “Minetest”) is wonderful. For the uninitiated, think of it is a free and open source “base game engine” upon which all sorts of “games”, additions, and reworks have been done. On the surface, you just have “Minetest Game”, which is essentially a test game similar to a stripped-down Minecraft. However, because it is basically a base game in and of itself, there’s all sorts of major reworks and even entire published games built from it, many of which take vastly different approaches. Some lean more into the “Mineclone” idea, whereas others go down entirely different paths – all built from one core.
Now then, having seen the title, THIS idea is simple. I know it’s been discussed before, but I’m just curious as to a “2026 revisit”, if nothing else: What if there was an equivalent to Luanti for the 2D sidescroller genre? Terraria is my all-time favorite game, and the modding community has no doubt contributed majorly to that. However, it’s not alone – Starbound, Planet Centauri, the upcoming Kyora, and other games like this genre have all come and done things their own way, many even bringing dedicated modding communities in similar fashion.
Despite their many differences, they share ENOUGH of a core for them to often be compared and even described as “Terraria-like” or “Starbound-like”, for instance. That core? The 2D sidescrolling, platforming, metroidvania-like sandbox experience with all the caves and cliffs (don’t copyright strike me), alongside a fundamental shared idea for progression and combat. With all these elements, what’s stopping there from being a Luanti-like FOSS engine or base for the 2D sandbox sidescroller?
Just think of the potential here: One immediate thing comes to mind, the cancelled “Terraria Otherworld”. There have been Terraria mods trying to recreate the experience, but from all we saw of it, there were likely going to be things Terraria’s current engine can’t do. Starbound’s engine, on the other hand, is much more capable in some regards, though it’s holding onto a game with closed-source assets and other modding limitations of its own (I’ve seen “Starbase”, but never quite a “sModLoader”). Then there’s others like Planet Centauri and Kyora, both taking different approaches of their own, but imagine how much could be done with a fully open source, easily-modifiable base engine.
All that remains is the crucial question of “who’s going to make this?” I, unfortunately, am much more troubleshooter than programmer, but this is an idea I and others would no doubt be willing to help set up connections to get rolling. After all, how did Luanti start? Sure, it hasn’t made Minecraft or Hytale “obsolete”, and they have advantages of their own, but imagine a DEDICATED modular base engine for the 2D sidescroller genre (not just “Minetest 2D”, which is conformed to the 2D style despite not originally being built around it).