When comparing TIS-100 vs Minetest, the Slant community recommends TIS-100 for most people. In the question“What are the best educational games on PC?” TIS-100 is ranked 5th while Minetest is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose TIS-100 is:
TIS-100 has a leaderboard function for all 45 puzzles in the game which allows users to compare score with friends and random online players. This way people can see how high they rank in comparison to all other players.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Competitive score comparing
TIS-100 has a leaderboard function for all 45 puzzles in the game which allows users to compare score with friends and random online players. This way people can see how high they rank in comparison to all other players.
Pro Teaches actual coding
The game is basically text based which means users will have to actually type in code in order to play. This makes for a learning experience for those unfamiliar with coding due to actually having to code in order to play.
Pro Replayability through a never ending sandbox creation mode
Users can create their own puzzles in the 3 available sandbox modes in game. This allows for users to come back to the game over and over to create custom puzzles and experience something different each time making for a lot of replayability.
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 No in game tutorial makes it difficult to learn
There is no hand holding with this game, no in-game tutorial makes it difficult to know how to play. Though there is a PDF manual that can be printed out.
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.