Game Discussion • Re: Game Ideas/Requests here

A MINETEST GAME IDEA ABOUT SETTLING LAND maybe this is already out there, i didn't look to hard, and i'm not a coder so maybe this is not practical without a full studio idunno anyway here goes:

the basic concept is the minetest world but part of the dynamic is to retake the world from the wilderness by settling land. (a certain span of coordinates set as the endgame goal or as part of a larger game play to defeat the dragon etc)

In order to settle land you have to build a certain amount of infrastructure: a wall (with a door), lighting, a water source etc, basic living accommodations for villagers, a tent, campfire, etc and iron golem/dogs/village_guard_mobs (like dogs but can be armed with better swords and and armor and maybe have to consistently be paid with emeralds) etc

the game starts off with a certain amount of villagers at SafeCamp at the world origin a 60 by 60 where monsters can't enter (maybe unless you're there during the night to force the survival part) , with say five villagers, if all but one villager dies you either lose entirely or there's some very heavy penalty (quest to cure a zombie into a villager maybe) dependent on game difficulty, you need to take at least two villagers to your new settlement and now you are ready to register it.

i don't know exactly the efficient way to code this but using the (undroppable) surveyor tool you designate the bottom block of your (minimum four block high stone or better) wall. if it completes a circuit (like the obsidian portal) its a valid wall and that area is ready to be defined as settled if the game can find the necessary accommodations.

finally you call in a raid (sort of like bad omen but it starts outside the walls of your village), the monster mobs will have to be powerful enough to provide a challenge despite a wall perhaps some will have pickaxes and spiders can climb walls etc,

if you and your villagers survive the raid (and you may not leave for the duration) the land inside the village is settled (plus a certain radius around it which can be extended a certain amount by building outlying guard towers etc)

once the village is settled the villagers will start producing various things or mining or some other product that's not practical to try to obtain yourself or we could just stick with emeralds which you in turn buy things from the villagers or hire larger armies. there should be ways to upgrade the villagers life quality (a farm, a smoker, a shower, a library etc) which would make them more productive.

(in terms of how much the villagers produce, i happen to not like time as resource for production in games i'd rather just have an increasing amount of food deposits necessary for village production but that does mean you use up the village and i'd rather not have that but still have an incentive for more villages i don't know exactly). also every village will produce a teleportation shrine which will allow you to move quickly in between villages (this would require some sort of UI to label and select which village to go to).

villages reproduce an additional four villagers which allows you to settle another two villages

the raids become harder and harder as you move away from the world origin, (i would want to devise a way to progress your village defending abilities which doesn't involve just increasingly high weapon damages so some sort of new monster attack strategy with a corresponding defense mechanism and i think redstone/mesecons could be really good over here,rotating dispenser canons, water/lava spewers etc) and maybe you have to clear out a pillager tower or two first

also randomly you will be notified of an impending monster raid on a random village, you will have an hour of gametime to get there and you can also call it in immediately. if the monsters kill all but the last villager that village is over run and monster spawners will be installed inside it to make it harder to reclaim.

eventually you settle the land enough that the wildlands are all reclaimed and you come to the monster citadels which have spawners in them that monsters can repair over time if they have access to them, you have to wipe out the monsters and stop them from accessing the first spawner as you destroy the second or third (installing sufficient villager guards etc)

there can be bosses throughout the game but the final monster citadel could have the major final boss and killing him wins the game.

some other features i'd like, (just mods really) the game menu should have an option "no cosmetics" which will remove the distinct wood types (for easier storage) and maybe get rid of andesite or terracota (or maybe use the rocky tools mod) but basically get rid of the cosmetic side of the game .

there should be other ways of becoming more powerful aside for the tools so that the food parts of the game contribute so maybe a complex innate health bar that gives you overall more strength that requires a balanced diet (adding either honey cake or pumkin pie will increase your jump height)

experience should do more to permanently unlock things like maybe recipes or max villager_guards you can hire (or how well they can be equipped) and monster mob drops should be more useful (there's no reason why i can get more utility from killing a cow than a zombie)

each biome should have unique challenges and opportunities (insert good ideas here)

i also want to figure out a way to make the combat more skill based because so far as i can tell now its pretty much based on you weapon and armor quality. also mining needs to find a balance between 10 minutes of pecking away to find a couple of diamonds versus a pile of them sitting at the entrance (maybe there could be a dynamic where you have remove the lava first to access diamond caves which involves either fighting mobs or designing a drain system, also maybe there could be a tool that tells you how much of each precious item there is in the 50x50x50 you're in so you can wiggle around to figure out where the diamonds are)

also a recipe for a marked chest/bed/crafting-table/active-bones that saves its coordinates to an in game log so you can find where you were easier

i would want a better way to control where the villagers and iron golems move but at the very least they need to stop trying to leave the village

the game should necessitate engineering your own complex structures (defense machines and traps and moats maybe monster farms for harvest etc maybe there could be a gentle way like a net trap to capture a zombie that will allow you to turn it into a villager that needs design)

this game sructure would be great for multiplayer PvE but also singleplayer and PvP (to conquer more land first)

Statistics: Posted by emlem — Sun Feb 22, 2026 16:10