This post is quite old and I think I am going to post a review of Luanti on the Steam Deck with a control scheme eventually, but I wanted to share this article in the mean time since I have been playing Luanti a lot on my Steam Deck.

Luanti is super easy to install on the Steam Deck, just go to desktop mode, open the “Discover” app, search for Luanti and click install. Done!

flathub.org/en/apps/org.luanti.luanti

Luanti also works great on Android from F-droid so if you are looking for a game and game engine that can be played on both a Steam Deck and an Android Phone Luanti is it!

f-droid.org/en/packages/net.minetest.minetest/

Something I want to stress, Luanti is a game engine that you can browse and download games from which are collections of mods. There are also mods that can be added to games.

One of the most popular games is Voxelibre, which creates an experience much like Minecraft.

content.luanti.org/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/

However Luanti is a general singleplayer and multiplayer voxel game engine, so a wide variety of games can be made with the engine.

Take for example Build A City, it is fairly simple but the controls are there for a 3D management/rts type game.

content.luanti.org/packages/Splizard/buildacity/

Koboldkrieg also is an example of how a 3D tower defense game might work, again pretty barebones but it demonstrates that it is entirely possible in the engine.

content.luanti.org/packages/Nathan.S/kobo/

Also see Extra Ordinance a top down shoot em up.

content.luanti.org/packages/…/extra_ordinance/

I say all that to emphasize that don’t look at Luanti and think this is just a Minecraft clone, it is really more like a Minecraft if it was open source and had a more generalist capability like Roblox to create different games.