While technically playable without, Minetest Game relies on modifications to add creatures, more biomes, gameplay mechanics, armours, weapons, tools, decorative nodes and so on.

The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields; the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and various lava/water bodies.

Disabling damage prevents dying, thus losing items and the possible frustration it might cause and Creative Mode provides players with infinite resources to build whatever they want without having to gather them first.

Luanti features a built-in content browser showing packages uploaded to ContentDB, allowing users to install games, mods and texture packs with a single click.

Mods can be used to add or modify nodes, gameplay mechanics, tools, weapons, armour, monsters, player skins and the user interface.

The full source code of Luanti and most of its games and their artistic assets such as textures and sounds, are distributed under free licenses, making it easier to publish modified versions and derivatives.

[2] Perttu Ahola was the only developer working on the project for about six months, until Ciaran Gultnieks started making code contributions in May 2011.

[15] Since version 5.0.0 the in-game browser lets users download games and modifications as well as their dependencies from a website called ContentDB and the Irrlicht Engine was forked.

Such examples are: Opensource.com listed Luanti at #1 in its "Best open source games of 2015",[21] 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.