Vintage Story is a survival block building game. It got a good size update this last week. Here are some of the cool updates.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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It's great but not for everyone. I don't know how to properly describe it but it's like Minecraft if it were extremely pedantic.
Honestly even if you don't like the specific mechanics of Vintage Story I think you have to appreciate it for being the only real alternative to Minecraft (besides the still pretty alpha stage project Minetest and Valoren which seems to be trying to recreate a different game). Which... stop for a second and think about it as gargantuanly lovecraftian-eldritch-god-sized of a phenomena that Minecraft is... there aren't any other moderately successful alternatives that really try to innovate or even copy Minecraft that have stood the test of time and attracted consistent playerbases besides Vintage Story. That is awful for the health of the genre that Minecraft pioneered and popularized! As a video game fan it is worth appreciating Vintage Story JUST on that basis as there is so much incredible potential in the ideas Minecraft clumsily fumbles at even if you hate Minecraft (which honestly has terrible core game mechanics, especially combat, see Valheim for an example of how to do pretty much everything Minecraft does better minus the whole blocks thing).
Vintage Story provides an alternative place that Minecraft modpacks/total conversions (like what Vintage Story was originally) can find a platform outside the control of an awful multibillion dollar company. It is only a matter of time before someone makes a modpack for Vintage Story that you will like even if you don't like vanilla Vintage Story. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Minecraft, even though there are countless mods for Minecraft there is no way in hell that Microsoft currently or in the future will ever truly value the role of artists and modders in evolving Minecraft. Long term as far as Microsoft is concerned the Bedrock edition and merchandising the aesthetic of Minecraft is all that is really worth investing in no matter what their PR says. It means decisions about the structure of Minecraft won't truly ever include a consideration of how it will impact modders who want to apply their own creative spark and vision to Minecraft.
It is similar to how even if you don't like the specific game mechanics of 7 Days To Die (it certainly at times has unfocused design goals) you have to respect it for being a great platform for modpacks and total conversions run by a company that isn't mono-maniacally focused on being a shitty late stage capitalist nightmare machine.
I. I'd argue that Minetest provides an alternative to Minecraft as a modding platform as it's build to be extendable. Hell, Mineclonia tries to recreate "the Minecraft experience" to a T. But why would I play (and mod) Minetest, when I can play Minecraft which has way bigger community, so there are more interesting mods? That said, I hope both Minetest and Vintage Story grow their modding scenes more.
II. I find it baffling that no one took the Tekkit / Feed the Beast formula and spun it off as a standalone game. (Maybe except FortressCraft.)
Sure Minetest and Mineclonia are great but they aren’t anywhere near as developed or fleshed out as Vintage Story. In a couple of years maybe I will agree, but at this point Vintage Story is a fully fledged Minecraft-like with a complete gameplay loop and Mineclonia isn’t. Minetest/Mineclonia are super cool though, I am not bashing them (I will bash their terrible names however).
Because on a longer term scale even if Minecraft has way more mods currently there are very serious issues and limitations with the Java edition. There are also serious performance bottlenecks with the Java edition. Microsoft also doesn’t give a shit about modifying and building out Minecraft in a way that facilitates modders doing new interesting things, they are simply incapable of valuing modding given the nature of a cancerously large company like Microsoft. The point is to sell merchandise and push kids onto the Bedrock edition, that is the only lens through which the people with the power to make decisions at Microsoft will ever perceive Minecraft.
Long term, successful mod packs on Minecraft Java are on a dead end road. Maybe not everyone can see that dead end right now, but disgustingly huge and powerful companies like Microsoft only ever make one kind of choice in these kinds of situations, the dead end is inevitable for modded Minecraft. Maybe it won’t happen tomorrow, maybe it won’t happen for a couple of years but it will happen and the fact that Vintage Story and Minetest exist chugging along with small but vibrant modding communities will be the only thing that saves the creative potential of the genre at that point.