Best Game Engines

Nakama is an open source game server framework developed by Heroic Labs, designed to facilitate the creation of real-time, multiplayer, and social games across various platforms, including Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, and more. It provides a comprehensive suite of features such as real-time multiplayer capabilities, customizable matchmaking algorithms, leaderboards, in-game chat, and support for in-game currencies. Developers can extend Nakama's functionality using server-side logic written in Go, TypeScript, or Lua, allowing for authoritative game mechanics and enhanced control over game state. The platform also offers open-source client libraries tailored for different game engines and languages, ensuring seamless integration and flexibility in game development. Nakama is your dedicated server, not another multi-tenant SaaS. Add custom features and secure authoritative gameplay logic directly to your game server.

Phaser is a fast, free, and fun open source HTML5 game framework that offers WebGL and Canvas rendering across desktop and mobile web browsers. It has been actively developed for over 10 years. Phaser is built on and around web standards and puts the browser first. Web export isn't an afterthought or checkbox on a feature list; it's our home. Phaser is fully open source, and you have unrestricted access to every last line of code in the core library. Phaser has more ready-made templates than any other game framework and is a great CLI tool. Games made with Phaser have been used as the cornerstone for marketing campaigns for years. They've been deployed everywhere, including as prominent features on sites for major Hollywood film blockbusters, massive brand promotional campaigns, educational content, interactive experiences, TV shows, news reports, charity fund-raising broadcasts, live events marketing, and so many more.

Defold is a free and open source game engine designed for high-performance cross-platform game development. It comes fully featured out of the box, requiring no setup or configuration, allowing developers to simply download the editor and start creating. The engine includes a visual editor, code editor, Lua scripting, Lua debugger, scene editor, particle editor, and tilemap editor, and supports both 2D and 3D game development. With a single codebase and no need for external tools, Defold enables publishing to major platforms such as PlayStation5, PlayStation4, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, Windows, Steam, HTML5, and Facebook. It offers a component-based system for building games, allowing the use of basic building blocks to create complex behavior, and supports writing game logic using Lua. Developers can add new functionality from the asset portal, set up their own local build environment, and write native code to extend the engine.

MonoGame is a free and open-source framework that allows developers to create cross-platform games using C# and other .NET languages. It supports multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. MonoGame provides a comprehensive set of features, such as 2D and 3D rendering, sound playback, input handling, and content management, enabling the development of high-quality games across various genres. The framework is a re-implementation of Microsoft's XNA 4 API, ensuring familiarity for developers with XNA experience. Notable games developed with MonoGame include "Streets of Rage 4," "Carrion," "Celeste," and "Stardew Valley." MonoGame is actively maintained by the MonoGame Foundation and its community, with ongoing updates and support.

Gideros is a free and open-source cross-platform game development framework that enables developers to create high-performance 2D games using the Lua programming language. It offers instant testing on real devices through Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for lengthy export or deployment processes. Built on C/C++ and OpenGL, Gideros ensures that games run at native speed, fully utilizing the power of CPUs and GPUs. The framework supports easy extension through plugins, allowing developers to import existing code in C, C++, Java, or Objective-C and bind it to Lua. Gideros provides its own class system with standard object-oriented programming practices, enabling clean and reusable code. The comprehensive development environment includes a lightweight IDE, players for desktops and devices, a texture packer, and a font creator. Gideros supports multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and HTML5.

Solar2D is a Lua-based game engine focused on ease of iterations and usage. As a fully open-source project forked from the well-established and widely used Corona SDK game engine, Solar2D allows developers to create applications for mobile, desktop, and connected TV devices with a single codebase, supporting platforms such as iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, macOS, Windows, Linux, and HTML5. The engine features an instant-update simulator, enabling developers to see code changes in real time, and supports live builds for rapid testing on real devices over a local network. A vast array of plugins is available to extend the core functionality, covering aspects like in-app advertising, analytics, and media. For additional customization, developers can call any native (C/C++/Obj-C/Java) library or API using Solar2D Native. Built on the lightweight and fast Lua scripting language, Solar2D is completely free to use, with no hidden fees, charges, or royalties.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework from Apple that enables developers to create immersive 3D experiences for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications. Built atop Metal and OpenGL, SceneKit provides a descriptive API for importing, manipulating, and rendering 3D assets. Developers can construct complex scenes using nodes (SCNNode), each representing elements like geometry, lights, cameras, or other attributes. The framework supports a range of features, including a physics engine (SCNPhysicsBody) for realistic simulations, particle systems for effects like fire or rain, and integration with ARKit to add 3D content to augmented reality experiences. SceneKit also offers tools for organizing scenes, such as the scene graph, which allows for the hierarchical structuring of nodes. Additionally, developers can utilize the SceneKit Scene Editor within Xcode to assemble assets into scenes, streamlining the development process.

Cocos2d-x is an open source, flexible, and lightweight cross-platform game engine that has been providing developers with stable and mature solutions since 2011. The engine offers interfaces in C++, Lua, and JavaScript, supporting platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and HTML5 browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Built upon OpenGL ES 2.0 and Metal for graphics rendering, Cocos2d-x fully exploits the GPU performance of mobile devices while maintaining compatibility. Developers can utilize Lua or JavaScript scripting languages to perform hot updates to games, eliminating the need to send packages to app stores and wait for review. The engine's open-source capabilities allow for extensive customization, enabling game companies to develop their own game types and extensions, including combining their own 3D engines to solve 2D interface and UI problems. According to test data, Cocos2d-x version 3.x is compatible with 99.7% of Android devices in China.

Godot provides a huge set of common tools, so you can just focus on making your game without reinventing the wheel. Godot is completely free and open-source under the very permissive MIT license. No strings attached, no royalties, nothing. Your game is yours, down to the last line of engine code. Nodes for all your needs. Godot comes with hundreds of built-in nodes that make game design a breeze. You can also create your own for custom behaviors, editors and much more. Flexible scene system. Create node compositions with support for instancing and inheritance. Visual editor with all the tools you need packed into a beautiful and uncluttered context-sensitive UI. Friendly content creation pipeline for artists, level designers, animators and everyone in between. Persistent live editing where changes are not lost after stopping the game. It even works on mobile devices! Create your own custom tools with ease using the incredible tool system.

SpriteKit is Apple's 2D game development framework that provides a graphics rendering and animation infrastructure for animating textured images, or sprites. It leverages Metal to achieve high-performance rendering and integrates seamlessly with other Apple frameworks like ARKit and SceneKit, allowing for the creation of immersive augmented reality experiences. Developers can utilize SpriteKit's scene editor within Xcode to design and preview game levels, characters, and animations, streamlining the development process. The framework also supports physics simulations, particle systems, and various special effects, enabling the creation of dynamic and interactive game environments. With its intuitive API and robust toolset, SpriteKit simplifies the development of engaging 2D games and applications across Apple's platforms.

UNIGINE is a real-time 3D engine designed for enterprise and technology enthusiasts, offering photorealistic graphics and support for large virtual worlds through C++ and C# APIs. The engine is built with open-world capabilities in mind, featuring unique terrain technology that enables extreme detail up to 1 mm per pixel, along with runtime modification and collaborative editing. It supports 64-bit precision per coordinate, allowing for scenes as expansive as the solar system. UNIGINE provides three SDK editions tailored to different needs, the Sim SDK for simulation and training with planet-scale scenarios and immersive display setups; the engineering SDK, which is embeddable into enterprise applications such as digital twins, BIM, and smart city projects, featuring advanced GIS and CAD data handling; and the Community SDK for technical enthusiasts developing games and VR applications.