Top 2d game engine

In short, a game engine is the architecture that developers use to run the game where the components developers use are reusable to build the framework of the game. This gives them more time to focus on the unique elements like character models, textures, how objects interact, etc.

Our real time platform, powered by tools and services, offer incredible possibilities for game developers, and creators across industries and applications. Unity is a multi-platform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. 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. 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. The editor runs in bit and bit, in all platforms. With CRYENGINE, they have a simple goal: to create the most powerful game engine in the industry, and to give creators all across the globe the tools to harness this power to create world-class gaming experiences, no matter their budget or team size. Clear tutorials, detailed documentation, and a strong development community. The marketplace provides you with a wide range of assets ready to use in your projects.

Xenko is an open-source C game engine designed for the future of gaming. It comes with a full toolchain and is especially well suited to create realistic games but allows you much more! Xenko comes with a robust toolchain that enables you to intuitively and efficiently create, manage and modify all assets of your game. The suite of editors simplify and automate common development workflows.

Its nested prefab and archetype systems scale along all editors and assets. Xenko Game Studio has also been designed so that it can be extended easily. A plug-in system to help users extend the Game Studio is coming soon! Duality is a modular 2D game engine that provides its own visual editor. For a lot of game libraries, your code has the active role of setting everything up and managing it.

These roles are reversed here: Your primary job is to define objects and specify their behaviours — Duality can handle all the rest. The unrivaled graphics development engine for business and industry. GameMaker Studio 2 is your one stop destination if you want to get into game development.

The platform allows creators to use the tool's easy-to-learn drag-and-drop interface, or work hands-on with the engine's own scripting language, GML.

We talked to several developers who've made popular games in GameMaker, who shared their own experiences with the tool. Mark Essen, creator of Nidhogg and Nidhogg 2 , says GameMaker is great for beginners because scripting is pretty open-ended, and Yoyo Games has a wealth of tutorials and guides to help folks get set up quickly.

A marketplace also offers add-ons to customize the engine to build a platformer or top-down RPG. He notes that young developers should be " Of course, you might not be making a Steam-ready game right off the bat. Duncan Drummond, the creator of beloved roguelike Risk of Rain, also noted that GameMaker's ease of use can come back to haunt developers. Drummond also noted that GameMaker doesn't translate to any other engines, so if you're looking to make the jump to Unity or another engine down the line, this might not be the tool for you.

Starting over frequently is a great way to work your design muscles. Get involved, get as much help as you can. Just make work, even if it's bad. The more mistakes you make the more you'll learn. It's fun and relatively easy—and doesn't really cost you much but time. Unity is one of the main platforms for popular indie games, and while it has impressive 3D capabilities, there are dozens of fantastic 2D games built in the engine, too.

Unity has more of a learning curve than the other engines on this list, but with a huge community and bountiful tutorials, there are more than enough resources out there to get you off to a solid start. Unity's asset store also includes a wealth of add-ons that customize the engine for 2D development. There are a bunch of places that serve as documentation and the forums are somewhat active. Head over there to download it and then go there to get started or here if you prefer video.

You can use it to create portable games that will run on all desktop platforms. There is a full documentation and a decently active community. Go here to get started. You will need to install Python first just follow the instructions in the link. Then go follow this tutorial. This one is not a game engine but a 2D sprite rendering engine.

Download it here and head over there to get started or follow this tutorial if you prefer video. Download the engine here and head over there to get started. Raylib users have created bindings for multiple languages C , Go, Python etc. The engine development is funded on Patreon. There is a cheatsheet that serves as documentation it contains all the functions of the library. The community is not very active but the project gets regularly updated.

Arcade is an easy to learn Python library designed to make small 2D games. It might be a bit biased towards Arcade. There is a full documentation and the community is not very active but the project gets regularly updated. Go there to get the library and head over there to get started or here if you prefer video.

Xamarin has also created a C binding for the engine UrhoSharp , which means you can also use C. However you can find a lot of code samples in all three languages that can help you understand how it works. There is a full documentation and the forums are moderately active. Download it there and go to the wiki to get started. Tilengine is a free and open-source 2d graphics engine designed to create retro games. Download it here and go here to get started or there if you prefer video.

There is no included editor so you can use the one you want and you need to know how to code to use it. Follow these instructions to get started or go here if you prefer video.

There are also bindings for C and Python. You can find a wiki here and the forums are pretty much inactive. Download it here and go there to get started. Duality is a free and open-source 2D game engine that comes with a visual editor.

You can also customize your editor with plugins. The engine still gets regularly updated though. Download it here and go there to get started or here if you prefer watching a video. This reddit thread answers some questions and might be useful to check out. Amulet is a free small toolkit designed to create small games and experiments. The forums are dead. Go there to download it and then here to get started. It features a simple and easy to learn scripting language but you can also use Python if you want more complex game logic.

Orx is a 2. It has a lot of features such as data-driven configuration and 3D accelerated rendering. There is a full documentation and the forums are not too active, but a few people seem to be chatting over there. One of the smallest engines on this list for sure — although it seems to be pretty welcoming of new devs. The documentation seems pretty complete and there is a small community over on Discord. Definitely not for beginners. Where is orx game engine?

Hi Thomas and thank you for adding the nCine to the list. No mention of Dreams? And having already had my LBPK levels deleted by Sony after they closed the LBPK servers, my appetite for having my hard work deleted once again has dissipated into nothingness a thousand hours down the drain. Or indeed, any of the other humdrum aspects of coding which seem better suited to accountants than they do story-tellers, artists, or architects.

Hi, this is a really in-depth and informative list, i just have one little pet peeve though. Thanks for these tips! You may also want to put Allegro5 to the list.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Skip to content. Looking for the best 2D game engine for your next project? There are literally dozens of them on the market. It can get overwhelming really fast. Featured Games. Thanks for putting this together. Thank you for posting this very helpful info on game engines and tutorial links.

This is a great list — extremely helpful! But all in all, great list! Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Thomas Gervraud.