This modpack takes an incredibly unique spin on exploration/tech packs. I’m typically not a fan of “one block” tech mods like thermal series or ender io, but this mod blends them seamlessly with create to make a well rounded experience.

To get it out of the way, the visuals, atmosphere, and exploration of this pack is immaculate. Every new unique room we found was such a joy, and sometimes scary. (highly recommend using the MCVHC shader pack.) Exploring to find new resources never got old (though we did get lucky by having every renewable resource right by our base.)

The tech progression of this pack is really good. There are a few tedious aspects to it that prevent it from getting 5 stars, mainly the machine frame -> void chassis -> steel casing crafting tree getting old by the end of the pack. This pack fixes my biggest problem with Botania, mostly by skipping early game mana generation and letting you find a Kekimurus if you can brave the poolrooms. It also actually integrates Botania into the main progression in a way that makes sense.

I highly recommend playing this pack with a friend, as I imagine playing it solo could be pretty rough, but that goes for most modpacks. I played it with one friend, so your play time would likely be about double ours, which was 54 hours.

Overall, this is one of my favorite modpacks I’ve played since the classic era. It solves a lot of my gripes with tech packs, and properly integrates exploration into the tech progression. A solid 4.5/5, only brought down by some crafting recipes being a little much, and being disappointed in how little there is in the Nether/Infinite Library compared to the poolrooms, which I hope gets expanded on if this pack continues to get updates.

Liminal industries is aesthetically extremely strong. Each of the dimensions you have to go to are interesting and fun to explore, and while the poolrooms can get a bit repetitive, there is more than enough generation designed for the backrooms to make every journey away from your base unique and unsettling.

The tech progression itself is solid, but I wish it was more entangled with the setting. The first two chapters feel like they take advantage of the backrooms really well, but as the tech tree spreads out into all these different mods it feels like the cool, integrated elements like echo shard production and having to route items from your igneous extruders in different dimensions get drowned out by all the noise.

That being said, a modpack with the same progression but without Liminal Industries incredible setting would still be like a 6/10, and overall it is more than impressive enough to be a 5/5 in my book. Lastly, as others have already noted the late game is a bit bare.

Liminal Industries has a strong aethetic design, the generation of rooms is well dont, each room has design and care put into them, and it is very interesting to explore. I have put so much time exploring the different rooms and still find new secret passages and rooms.

The game performs well, other than a visual glitch (? its possibly intentional) that I’ve experienced where textures will have individual pixels horizontally stretch at the edges of the screen, that makes long sessions nauseating

(If it is intentional, I’ve found no way to turn it off)

The beginning progression of the game I’ve found enjoyable, but it quickly becomes reliant on the Create mod for all progression, with only small bits that require the use of the other tech & magic mods.

While I don’t mind the emptiness and lack of enemies overall, some people do find that boring. Hostile Mobs tend to only spawn in specific ‘sculked’ areas with exception to ravagers which I believe (can’t confirm) can spawn in unsculked areas

There are a few small glitches as well, like I discovered an exploit where if you use the soap item on a dyed cooler (which can be easily found around the backrooms) then it will duplicate all the items inside it

But overall its a very enjoyable experienced, I wouldn’t suggest trying to go through the progression, instead giving this modpack a go just to explore the world

I was considering leaving a lower star score for this pack because of how weak the late game is, but it made me hopelessly obsessed with Create which I feel probably meant it did it’s job at least in some way.

The backrooms are a perfectly executed and absolutely fantastic setting in this pack. The environment is generally very chill so it’s a lot of fun to find new rooms, figure out where you want to set up shop, and it lets the few unsettling parts it has hit a lot harder.

This is one of the most fine tuned Create experiences I’ve seen, and it accomplishes this with basically a single add-on; the presence of Create Low-Heated allows the pack to make actively heated Steam Engines the second source of stress generation you get after Hand Cranks and in tandem with Create 6’s Chain Conveyors allows the Steam Boiler to be the core of your base that you get to gradually expand as you progress and it feels great.

The biggest flaw with the pack is that it feels like it doesn’t have enough faith in it’s Create experience; late into the pack you will be interacting with other mods a lot more that don’t go together that well with Create. I stopped building out my automation somewhere halfway through Chapter 4 and at that point it became ferrying materials between various tech mod progression machines. The inclusion of Immersive Engineering is a massive negative after early game especially considering a particularly intrusive bug involving the Mixer interacting with Create pipes.

At some point it stops holding your hand and it feels like it expects a lot of previous knowledge about the mods involved, which gets especially rough with mods that have been updated and mods that have messed up quests associated. There is a quest in Chapter 5 that asks you to make the Osmium Compressor from Mekanism; it doesn’t do anything, and the associated github issue has not been touched for months. I got kind of confused and exhausted at this point since it has been years since I last played with Mekanism.

Other notes;

– Late game eyes feel like afterthoughts; one is essentially “throw 1000 managlass into the alfheim portal” and the other is “summon dragons breath ten times at the Eidolon brazier and then break your mouse spam right clicking”. The eyes in general could’ve been more involved to add more credence to the “industries” part of the pack name.

– Performance is great due to the low mod count and simple environment, although in singleplayer watch out for the potentially required Nether train chunkloading your base if you don’t chunkload both ends and spiking your ram usage when you’re exploring away from it.

– There are a handful of mods I didn’t really get to explore fully; for those I think this pack might be better enjoyed with friends to divide the labor up. Some mods are included to help with that such as Simple Voice Chat and Simple Radio.

**In the fairness of transparency, i am adding that i added two cosmetic things to this modpack, nothing that changes the modpack itself. Just some shaders to fit the atmosphere more and a model change to my character.**

I have yet to finish this modpack, but. Liminal industries is awesome. Fair warning now if you are not a fan of create this modpack tends to use it quite a bit. The experience of being of the backrooms is honestly really cool. There isnt really any jumpscare or anything, it just happens to be minecraft but in the original concept of the backrooms mostly. Even without jumpscares playing this modpack alone gives me a little bit of building anxiety just from the environment. There’s a ton of different rooms, and once you think youve seen them all you somehow manage to find another room you’ve yet to run into. Its quite varied. Its so much fun running through the environment and collecting resources to cobble your own.

But… there comes my crux with this modpack. After a bit you do less and less exploration. Eventually you start staying in one area as you can mostly make everything you need there at one point. The exploration sort of dips off and while its still fun it just loses that luster it had at the beginning. I wish there was more exploration to do in the later portion as you just quickly lose any reason to do so. Its not like it isnt fun anymore but i found the uniqueness of the modpack was the environment itself, was the backrooms. I hope that they expand on adding more to explore in the future to give more reason to not just huddle in one area after a bit. Still its fun to be able to turn the anxiety inducing backrooms into a home of your own.