When comparing Zero-K vs Minetest, the Slant community recommends Minetest for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” Minetest is ranked 13th while Zero-K is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Minetest is:
An easy to use lua API, and a large variety of existing modifications and games that can be downloaded and installed easily.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Multiplayer online battles
You can create your own multiplayer battles, even password protected ones for playing with friends only.
Pro Expansive tech tree
Land, sea, and air. Choose your favorite play-style and use the appropriate tech tree. There are tanks, bots, walkers, planes, helicopters, boats, and submarines available to you.
Pro Flat tech tree
All units are available from the start of the game. There are no unit upgrades and you don't need to build certain buildings to reach the next level of unit.
Pro Awesome graphical effects
Despite it is an open source engine, the graphics are fantastic.
Pro Cross-platform game
There are versions for Linux and Windows. The easiest way to play in Linux is using Lutris platform.
Pro Easily customization through LUA mods
An easy to use lua API, and a large variety of existing modifications and games that can be downloaded and installed easily.
Pro Open Source
Pro Runs fast and clean
Runs on Low-End Hardware, runs Fast, Spartan on Memory.
Pro Cross platform
Can be played on Android, Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Pro Fewer griefers than Minecraft
The smaller community means fewer players, and that mean fewer griefers than on Minecraft.
Pro Built for plugins from the beginning
Pro It's Free
Pro Fun and thorough tutorial
There is a tutorial game that you can download that teaches you how to play Minetest in a fun and intuitive way. There are even collectable gems you can try to find in the tutorial.
Cons
Con Bad visual design
Obviously this is an open soruce project so nobody expects AAA level gfx but this one looks exceptionaly bad. Some of the weapon effects are hideous to look at. Simple things like UI buttons and color scheme seem to be visually out of sync with the way unit models and the map terrrain look.
It seems like a mishmash of visual styles which is probably a result of many different contributors of varreying skill levels.
There definately are visually consistent and pelasant ot look at open source games so The visual design of the game needs to have some sort of strcut guidline or rely primarily on the taste of a single individual from the ZK team.
Con Flat balance
The economy is very close to a Total Annihilation economy (despite all the changes they introduced) but the unit balance resembles games with harder unit counters like Warcraft and Starcraft. In Blizard games, there are different ways to limit what unit type or kind you can build at any stage of the game, like tech structures which the opponnet can scout.
In Zero - K this is not the case since there are no tech buildigns focusing the player on a certain unit type which can be scouted. You can make all units at all times. The gameplay design feels amateur and not thought through From the broadest perspective. It also manages to miss the advantages of the Spring engine and mixes the need to micromanage units that counter each other with big Area of Effect Weapons.
Con Lack of mobs
Yet mobs can be installed through mods or subgames. However, if the server is not optimized, these can make the game run slower.
Con Not much to do even with mods
All I do in the game is dig underground and mine the ore within the caves. There are no monsters to fight, dungeons to explore, or any leveling systems/progression mechanics to keep me playing.
Con No weather
There's no built-in weather. However, there are mods which add this feature and extend it far beyond what you might expect from basic weather.
Con Rips off Minecraft
And not very well either.
Con Certain graphics are really bad
Parts of the games's graphics and functionality are really bad. Mob mods or default mobs look like a 4 year old drew them. However, the devs seem to be slowly sweeping through these issues. Come back soon if you don't like what you see yet.
Con Server lags
Almost everything is done server side, so the game can feel very janky on some servers.
Con Minecraft mod ecosystem separate from Minetest
Minetest is obviously an opensource implementation of Minecraft but the only problem is all the mods made for Minecraft do not work in Minetest. They could have designed their clone in such a way say fix it at 1.7.10 forge so that you could load up forge mods straight up and have them work somewhat. There's so much great content for Minecraft that is completely lost and unusable in Minetest, however at this pace of developement, maybe that will change in the future.