What is the best alternative to RPG Maker VX Ace?

Question

Built By the Slant team

Find the best product instantly.

4.7 star rating

Try it now - it's free

score 135 · Answer 1

MonoGame

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Support for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows (both OpenGL and DirectX), Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the OUYA console with even more platforms on the way. See More

Top Con

Slow rate of updates

Versions 3.9 is overdue by a year, and version 4.0 is set to release in 2040. See More

Top Pro

Open source

All the code is available to you ensuring you'll have the ability to make changes when you need to or even port to whole new platforms. See More

Top Con

Non-Windows tools are a bit funky

Monogame support for Xamarin Studio or Monodevelop is a bit shaky especially for library references. Only good non-Windows IDE compatible with MonoGame is Rider and that costs money & isn't open-source. See More

Top Pro

Well-known and documented API

The framework implements the XNA 4 API, so games made in XNA can be ported to other platforms using this. This was the same API used by the Xbox Live Indie Games platform so there's lots of documentation online for it. See More

Top Pro

Managed code

By leveraging C# and other .NET languages on Microsoft and Mono platforms you can write modern, fast, and reliable game code. See More

Top Pro

Good community

The community MonoGame has to offer is helpful and mature. See More

Top Pro

Performance on desktop

The performance on desktop platforms matches that of C++, but you still get all the pleasant features that C# has to offer. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Languages:C#

Mobile targets:Android, IOS, Windows phone

See All Experiences

135 27

score 18 · Answer 2

raylib

Top Pro

Simple

Very good for begginers who are looking for game FRAMEWORKS. See More

Top Con

Just coding

Lack of an interface, visual help or auto-debugging could make it difficult to use for a complete beginner. See More

Top Pro

Support forum

Though it's a small project, it has a forum on the webpage with helpful content available. See More

18 0

score 50 · Answer 3

EasyRPG

Top Pro

EasyRPG's player works with assorted games

Game player can run assorted RPG Maker 2000/2003 games out of the box with few glitches currently. See More

Top Pro

Aims to be compatible with RPG Maker 2000/2003 games

EasyRPG's editor aims to be compatible with projects made with RPG Maker 2000/2003. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

EasyRPG is licensed under the GPL license, with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Some third party RPG Maker patches are supported in the player already

Functionality not present in RPG Maker 2000/2003 such PNG 24 bit alpha transparency, MOD music support and some extra command line interface parameters, such as skip title menu, are already a part of the EasyRPG player. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Mobile targets:Android, iOS

Console targets:Nintendo, Playstation

50 2

score 33 · Answer 4

PICO-8

Top Pro

Takes away the pain of having to wire things together

Because it's an all in one product, you don't have to worry about things like how to load sprites. See More

Top Con

No collision library or other common things

Pico-8 is very minimalistic and as such doesn't come with really any abstractions whatsoever which means often you end up re-inventing the wheel. See More

Top Pro

Very simple programing language

It's lua with a few modifications. See More

Top Con

Code editor leaves some things to be desired

Such as code completion and automatic indentation. See More

Top Pro

Encourages building simple games

As a beginner it's all to tempting to try to make the games you like to play, like Zelda or Call of Duty when we should probably be making pong. See More

Top Con

Costs 15$

Unlike many of the other frameworks it's not free. However this is kind of a feature because it means it's much more likely to be supported. See More

Top Pro

Restrictions of tokens count "forces" to write code effectively

When you reach 8192 tokens, you're screwed. However, this limit can teach you to take a look at entire code and think how you could optimize it. See More

Top Con

Memory restrictions could be confusing or frustrating to a beginner

Top Pro

Possible writing code in external editor

Since launch of 0.1.12c version of software, you can now write and include external script using the same directive just like in C / C++. See More

Top Pro

Perhaps one of the easiest sound editors around

Top Pro

Share the game in a .png file with other Pico-8 users

Top Pro

You can read the code of any game you play

Top Pro

Lots of examples

Almost every game made for the Pico-8 is open source (if you can download the .png, you can see the source). Also there's the fancy Pico-8 "fanzine" that has lots of code examples as well as other great tutorials in a beautiful physical or PDF form. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get things going very quickly

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Pi, HTML5

Languages:Lua

3D:No

See All Experiences

33 2

score 12 · Answer 5

seccia.dev

Top Pro

Scripting options

You have the option to choose how to script your game. Either a node based, visual script similar to Unreal or a more classic code editor. See More

Top Con

Purchase licenses

The software is free, but if you wish to make your game for some sort of profit, you'll have to buy a license when using this software. See More

Top Pro

Simple and easy

Fairly simple and easy to learn and use. See More

Specs

License:Creator License, Explorer License, Business License

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, tvOS, Android, WebGL

12 1

score 118 · Answer 6

Adventure Game Studio

Top Pro

Easy to learn tool

Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine. See More

Top Con

Natively supports only 2D

2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though. See More

Top Pro

Completely free and open source

AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games. See More

Top Con

Uses dated tech

Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities). See More

Top Pro

Relatively well documented

Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community. See More

Top Con

Graphics renderer is a bit dated

Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects. See More

Top Pro

Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases

Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia". See More

Top Con

No visual editor for scripts

You have to actually write all scripts yourself. See More

Top Pro

Lots of assets available

An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing). See More

Top Con

Development is slow

Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time. See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc). See More

Top Con

AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages

Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages. See More

Top Con

Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre

The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch. See More

Top Con

Workflow is closely coupled with the editor

Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc) See More

Specs

License:Artistic License 2.0

Languages:AGS Script

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux

See All Specs

See All Experiences

118 9

score 26 · Answer 7

Flax Engine

Top Pro

Free

Can be used for free until you hit a rather high revenue cap, at which point you have to pay royalties. See More

Top Con

New software

As is standard with new software, not all of the bugs have been ironed out yet. See More

Top Pro

Powerful C# scripting

C# scripting is really well made, comparable to Unity, but without any of the legacy cruft. See More

Top Con

Few plugins

Unlike more mature engines, there isn't a vibrant ecosystem of plugins yet. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform

Supports most platforms, including Windows, Linux, Android, Nintendo Switch, ... See More

Top Con

Not open source

While the source code is available, it's not quite open source See More

Top Pro

Modern rendering backend

Has a very modern, performant and beautiful rendering backend. See More

Top Con

Not latest C# version

It uses Mono and is still on some variant of C# 7. See More

Top Pro

C++ support

The entire core is written in C++ and it supports writing game code in C++. The interoperability between C# and C++ is also nothing to scoff at. See More

Top Con

No OpenGL support

It only supports modern APIs, namely Vulkan and DirectX. This means that it won't run on very old machines. See More

Top Pro

Supports multiple IDEs

Works with any text editor and comes with proper support for Visual Studio, VSCode and Jetbrains Rider. See More

Top Pro

Excellent documentation

The documentation is well written, up to date and accepts improvements from the community. See More

Top Pro

Great and extensible editor

The editor is both powerful and simple. My favourite part is how easy it is to extend the editor with custom magic. See More

Top Pro

Source code available

The entire source of the engine is available on Github, though not under an open source license. See More

See All Experiences

26 3

score 54 · Answer 8

Twine

Top Pro

Easy to understand

The basics are very easy to grasp, and you can have a basic story up in minutes. See More

Top Con

Limited to interactive fiction

Twine is specialized to decision-based interactive fiction. Under the hood, a Twine game is just a flowchart for page transitions; the only way to add more complex behavior is to code it from scratch in JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Free for commercial projects

Twine is based on a GPL licence. You are free to download, modify and publish derivatives - even commercially. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web

54 7

score 18 · Answer 9

Moai

Top Con

Not for beginning developers

The Moai SDK has very advanced features which allow it to create powerful games. A drawback from this is that it is not very suitable for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

The Moai SDK Forum is active and users will go to great extents to answer queries, post code snippets, beta test, and even purchase and give feedback on each others' games. See More

Top Pro

Helpful and detailed documentation

Although the Moai SDK is very advanced and uses complicated features, the documentation wiki thoroughly and clearly explains how to use these features, such as the Moai Cloud(a service that provides web services for your game), and multiple ways to build from source. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:MacOS

18 3

score 102 · Answer 10

Tiled

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Not everyone uses the same operating system and why should they? Tiled supports Windows, Mac, and Linux so you can work in any environment you like. Also with daily builds you get to stay ahead of the curve! See More

Top Con

Must implement .tmx if your engine doesn’t support Tiled.

It’s not a huge deal but you do need to implement Tiled into your engine if you don’t have it. Don't be lazy just follow this guideline to get your game running. Must implement .tmx if your engine doesn’t support Tiled. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source

Using the GPL license means you get to use this software free and are free to make changes to it as you see fit. See More

Top Pro

Unlimited layers

Sometimes you need 20 layers to make something epic. Tiled lets you create as many layers as you need. See More

Top Pro

Use shell commands

Setup shell commands within Tiled so you can setup workflows for each of your games. See More

Top Pro

Supports Orthographic and Isometric tiles

Whether you want a straight on look at your world or a slightly skewed one Tiled has you covered. See More

Top Pro

Terrains

Setup boarders with your tilesets so making tiles provide the correct connections automatically. This feature will speed up your level creation. See More

Top Pro

Auto-mapping

One of the coolest things is to create rules so you can automate the mapping process. Want to have certain tiles to always have a collider? Simply make a rule for it and it'll do it automatically. Speed up your mapping process with this feature. See More

Top Pro

Many engines already have support

A big list of engines already have support for Tiled provided by those in the community. See if the engine you use is already on the list. See More

Top Pro

Can create colliders and triggers within editor

Tiled makes it easy to setup triggers and colliders with its vector tools or you can set up a tile that’s invisible in your game. Change collider/trigger properties so you can access them within your game. See More

Top Pro

Tile size and image size do not have to match

Want to import a giant object but don’t want to split it up? Import it and place it the exact size you want it as one object. See More

Top Pro

Properties

Create properties for your map, layers, tilesets, tiles, and objects. Have the flexibility you need to create the best levels for your game. See More

Top Pro

Engine agnostic

Tiled provides an easy solution for tile maps for any engine even the custom engine you are now making. This makes Tiled a very versatile tool for 2D games. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

See All Experiences

102 13

score 758 · Answer 11

GDevelop

Top Pro

Easy to use

The whole interface is intuitive and easy to learn: each part of the game can be designed using visual editors. The objects editor is used to create the objects of the game, the scene editor help you to build the levels of your game and the events editor allows to give life to the whole game without programming. See More

Top Con

No support for atlas/tilemap and sprite sheet

At this point, you need to separate the tileset maps or character animation sprite sheet before importing it to the engine, but the developers are working on this feature. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source

GDevelop's runtime libraries are MIT licensed. It can be used freely for projects of any type and there are no royalties associated with publishing games developed with GDevelop. See More

Top Con

GUI is slow to load

This makes doing the simplest things, like looking at one of your maps, hard to do. In looking into this program, it can stall a PC while trying to load a sample map. See More

Top Pro

Powerful events system to create games without programming

No need for coding using this system which is clear and powerful: events are composed of conditions and actions. Actions are launched when conditions are fulfilled. This is a very friendly way of making games and is still efficient for advanced usage, contrary to most other "block"/"drag'n'drop" systems. See More

Top Con

No 3d, not even fake 3d

This is a 100$ 2d-only game engine. You could of course use pre-rendered 3d graphics, but your games themselves will exist only in the x and y axes. See More

Top Pro

Open source plugin SDK

The plugin SDK is open source, so if you want to extend it, you can. See More

Top Con

It's very slow

Although suggested otherwise, GDevelop doesn't compile the games - it just adds wrappers so each OS can run the HTML5 game it creates. That means it runs much, much slower than other engines that do compile games. See More

Top Pro

Lots of features to build games

The engine includes pathfinding, physics engine, multitouch support, custom hitboxes, platformer engine, tiled maps, multiple layers and cameras out of the box. All of these features can be used without programming knowledge, using the visual editors. See More

Top Con

No cross-compiler

The Windows and Linux versions of GDevelop can each compile a native application; but the Windows version cannot compile for Linux, nor vice versa. See More

Top Pro

Quickly add behaviors to objects

Prebuilt behaviors can be added to objects. This is a very efficient way to add a physics engine or make a platformer game. Lots of behaviors are included, from the most advanced (Physics, platformer, top-down movement) to really simple one (like the behavior to destroy objects when outside the screen or the one to drag objects with mouse or touch). And you still have full controls over your game as behaviors can be modified using the events! See More

Top Con

Optional subscription not mentioned on main site

While the engine is free and open source as stated on the main website, it does not mention that some optional features and services are actually activated through a paid subscription (two tiers: 2€ and 7€). Those features are: no nag screen shown when debugging, additional metrics available on games dashboard, access to more than 2 cloud exports per day (unlimited local export can be done without subscription, provided the right packaging tools are installed and configured), easy removal of GDevelop splash screen (can be done manually without subscription). See More

Top Pro

New documentation for gd5 is good for starting

A new doc is improving for gd5 that is nice for beginners and after that you can learn more from examples. Also, gd4 wiki is still there. See More

Top Con

Behaviors of Objects are rather generalized

Since it has a fully GUI editor, the objects you are allowed to add in your game are pretty generalized (PhysicsObject, TiledSprite, PlatformerObject, etc). This limits the freedom of a game developer while making a game, as the object msut follow the preset behaviours imposed on it. See More

Top Pro

Constant updates

New releases and bug fixes are consistent. New updates are released anywhere within 2 weeks or 1 month from the last one. Its auto-updater also does it job very well making life a lot easier. See More

Top Pro

Online version available, compatible with iOS and Android

Thanks to its open source nature, GDevelop-App.com was built over the GDevelop engine. GDevelop-App.com is a complete game creator similar to GDevelop, available directly in your browser and compatible with iPad and most Android tablets and phone! The app is perfect for making games directly from your sofa and you can even start a game on GDevelop-App and export it to open it inside GDevelop. See More

Top Pro

Multilanguage support

GDevelop is available in many languages and even community can help in translations. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Languages:C++, JavaScript

Dev platforms:Windows 7+, macOS 10.11+, Linux, Web

Desktop targets:Windows 7+, macOS 10.11+, Linux

See All Specs

See All Experiences

758 64

score 72 · Answer 12

PlayCanvas

Top Pro

Real-time collaborative online editor tool

PlayCanvas has an online editor that lets you build scenes and work with other people in your team in real-time. This is all done through the web browser without having to install any additional software. See More

Top Con

Private projects are only available for premium users

The free tier does not support any private projects. Instead, all the code and assets will be hosted openly. While not a problem for open source games and for developers who intend to make an open source game, it can be a deal-breaker for teams who want to keep their code and assets private. See More

Top Pro

Powerful assets pipeline

Assets and content delivery is very different on a web platform comparing to native. So PlayCanvas challenges best practices to allow developers decide how their content is delivered and in what form. Async Assets download allows developers to load content as the app goes, instead of asking to download all assets in advance risking users to simply navigate away while staring at loading screens. Formats for 3D models and textures support covers all the popular tools. And the workflow is as simple as dragging and dropping your files right into the Assets Panel. The cloud will do the rest of the hard work optimizing and converting your files into runtime-friendly and compressed data. See More

Top Con

No collision offset

Top Pro

Rendering engine runs on the browser

Has an advanced WebGL renderer that runs in the browser. See More

Top Con

Not many tutorials

Top Pro

Avoids having to download lots of textures for lightmaps

Lightmaps are an efficient way to deliver lighting to your scenes for a long time. But they come with the cost of large textures. PlayCanvas offers a unique solution for a web platform, it renders lightmaps when an app is loading in runtime. This is faster than downloading MBs of textures. And it's much more convenient: simply switch your light sources to bake, and static models to be lightmapped, and the engine will do the rest. See More

Top Pro

Friendly and active community

PlayCanvas has Feed as homepage for registered users, listing Dev Logs of other developers. This allows to socialize with other developers like yourself in a twitter-like environment. More to that, there is also an active forum, where developers help each other to solve their challenges. Developers of PlayCanvas itself are always looking forward to chat and help the community with any problems that may arise. See More

Top Pro

Integrated physics engine

PlayCanvas lets users integrate physics in their game rather easily, using the powerful Bullet Physics Engine (ammo.js). Should also be noted that the physics engine is delivered as an optional library, so by default being disabled it does not add any extra download size to your apps. See More

Top Pro

Has a free tier

Engine is free for projects under 200MB and with no more than 2 people on a team. The free tier has no engine restrictions. Tools are totally free too. There are no special limiting features behind any paywalls, and free users have all the features as paid users. There are no royalties associated with publishing your apps and games - you've made them, you own them. It is free to publish to playcanvas.com as well, just by one click in Editor. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform support

PlayCanvas lets you build games that run in mobile, desktop browsers, and native mobile apps. PlayCanvas can even make games that can run inside mobile social media and instant messenger clients like Twitter and WhatsApp. See More

Top Pro

Small app size

The engine itself weighs just under 150Kb, and it's always challenged to stay small. There is no extra weight that has to be carried with your app, just your assets and scripts in a runtime-friendly compressed form. This allows users to engage with your content in matter of seconds, and even just under a second on a good connection. See More

Top Pro

Open source

PlayCanvas is fully open source and is under active development. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to use

Top Pro

Loads extremely fast

Top Pro

Has hot code reloading

Real-time link between your launched app and the editor allows the developer to preview and play with their scene without needing to refresh the game after every change in the code to see the updated result. See More

Specs

Price:Free to Use & Open Source

Supported platforms:Any Browser on Windows, MacOS, and Linux

Dev platforms:Windows, Linux, MacOS

Mobile targets:Android, iOS

See All Specs

See All Experiences

72 12

score 89 · Answer 13

Phaser

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

Phaser keeps things simple and as such is easy to use by beginners. See More

Top Con

Missing accessibility features

While not a big issue, it may be a dealbreaker for some. See More

Top Pro

1000s of examples

Thousands of example are on the Phaser website, which show everything you could want to do with Phaser. See More

Top Con

Poor code structure

There's little in terms of cohesiveness in classes, methods or patterns. See More

Top Pro

Supports WebGL with canvas fallback

If WebGL is unavailable, Phaser automatically switches to HTML5 canvas. See More

Top Pro

Targets mobile browsers

Built specifically for mobile web browsers. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web

Price:Free

Scripting language:Javascript, Typescript, ES6 Ecmascript

See All Experiences

89 15

score 205 · Answer 14

Panda3D

Top Pro

Free, open-source, and permissive license

The liberal license allows use of the engine for any purpose without restrictions or royalties. See More

Top Con

No unified editing program

Unlike Unity and Unreal, Panda3D doesn't currently offer a single, unified editing program in which objects can simply be dragged in and assigned properties (although third-party solutions are available). Developers are expected to design their scenes in a modelling program like Maya or Blender instead, and import them into Panda3D using Python code. See More

Top Pro

Will be very easy for developers already familiar with Python

Although it's possible to use only C++ to program in Panda3D, all its power is available to the Python scripting language, while not trading in performance since the performance-critical parts are implemented in C++. It has a powerful binding layer that exposes the vast majority of the API via Python-based interfaces. See More

Top Con

Limited tutorial

Step by step tutorial is limited. Manual is too general and short without examples. Samples are too complex for beginners. See More

Top Pro

Supports most popular physics engines

Panda3D has in-depth integration with industry standard physics engines such as Bullet, NVIDIA PhysX and ODE, but also offers a simpler built-in physics engines that will cover more basic needs. See More

Top Con

Direct3D support is behind

Direct3D support not up to par with OpenGL support, only version 9 is supported. See More

Top Pro

Flexible scene and object hierarchy system

Creating weird world constructs is generally a breeze. The node system the engine runs with allows to build self-looping worlds and, on large scale, non-Euclidean scenes without having to introduce a huge amount of custom code. See More

Top Con

Terrible compilers support

Does not support any other compilers then MSVC on Windows, neither Clang nor MinGW. See More

Top Pro

Powerful profiling and debugging tools

Panda3D has a suite of powerful tools to help track down performance bottlenecks, memory leaks and examine internal state. See More

Top Con

Developer isn't very competent

Panda3D only has one developer and he utterly fails to fix problems with his engine, instead focuses on style guidelines and breaking code. See More

Top Pro

Supports browser deployment

Panda3D offers web plug-ins that allow deployment of an application to all major browsers. A WebGL port is in the works as well. See More

Top Con

Loading Pandas3d will change your builtins to contain non explicit references to non-standard helper functions

A lot of the pollution comes from storing global state. Instead, you can store and update the global state of a namespace instead. As for the built-in pollution, you can make a wrapper that backs up builtins, imports pandas and then restores builtins, though this may not work as pandas almost certainly uses it's extra builtins to work. The best thing to do would be to explicitly import the same objects that are in the builtins over the top of the modified builtin namespace, although it doesn't remove the code smell, it helps to make things look less (if not at all) magic. See More

Specs

License:BSD-3-Clause

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux; FreeBSD

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

Mobile targets:-

See All Specs

See All Experiences

205 37

score 30 · Answer 15

Construct 3

Top Pro

Runs in the browser

If you don't have your Chromebook, Construct 3 will run in the browser. See More

Top Con

Subscription based

It is subscription based pricing. It might not be for everyone. See More

Top Pro

Fast and small

Construct 3 loads really fast. See More

Top Pro

Timeline

It has a timeline feature which allows you to make amazing animations. See More

Top Pro

No installation required

As it runs in the browser you can load it on any computer and show your friends your work really quickly. See More

Top Pro

Works on Chromebooks

Construct 3 works on a Chromebook without any issues. See More

30 8

score 345 · Answer 16

Cocos2d-x and Cocos Creator

Top Pro

A proven engine for mobile development

25% of iPhone games are made using Cocos2d-x. This means you will not be alone in development, and will have access to a large community. You'll know you are developing for an engine that works. See More

Top Con

Poor support and non-existent community

Up until 2013, this was one of the best engines around. However, since then it was bought by a Chinese company and began stagnating - it's virtually in a slow death. Most developers abandoned Cocos in favor of more modern solutions leaving the community weak and the forums with little or no traffic. Although the Cocos2d-x Forum seems to have a decent community going. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

Documentation includes a programming guide, API reference, video tutorials and massive reference test code project showing all functions and giving working code to the user. See More

Top Con

No Graphics user interface

Top Pro

Supports 3D models with skeleton animation

A new feature since Cocos2d-x v3.1 is support for 3D models (in your 2D game), not only this but support for skeleton animations is included too! This awesome feature allows for impressive characters in your game along with easier, more fluid and realistic animations. See More

Top Con

Modest functionality

Almost all free alternatives are more convenient, faster, and more functional. See More

Top Pro

Great script language support

It supports Lua and Javascript with full feature support. Especially with Cocos2d-JS you can develop games cross web and native, and the native solution have great performance with JS Bindings, much better than hybrid solution. See More

Top Pro

Highly active community for questions and support

Cocos2d-x forums are active. See More

Top Pro

OpenGL hardware acceleration

Top Pro

Future-proof

Cocos2d-x is not only open source but also supported by Chukong Technologies of China and USA. Regularly updated and adding support for the latest technologies. 2014 has already seen the release of Version 3, a new Cocos Studio development toolkit (optional) and support for new technologies like skeleton animation systems Spine and Adobe DragonBone. See More

Top Pro

Greater performance than high level APIs

Cocos2d-x is C++ based engine and it has CPU advantages for most platforms because of that. It uses polygonal mesh methods for sprite rendering for using GPU advantages. (You also use quad methods for benefit CPU). See More

Top Pro

No external dependencies

Because it is based on Pyglet. See More

Top Pro

One code for all platforms

On top of supporting pretty much all existing platforms (except consoles), Cocos Creator (Cocos's IDE) allows you to write 1 code that runs on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS and HTML5 (not Linux though). See More

Top Pro

Easy integration of 3rd party plugins

Through the use of SDKBox you can easily integrate 3rd party SDKs and plugins for each version of Cocos2D (Lua, C++ or JavaScript), you just choose the SDKs to integrate and SDKBox will do the rest. For example, if you want to add a rating plugin, you use sdkbox::PluginReview::init(); and if you want to add the Vundle Ad Network SDK, you use the one packaged in SDKBox SDKBOX sdkbox::PluginVungle::init();. See More

Top Pro

Allows for easy debugging

It has a built-in Python interpreter that allows for easy debugging. See More

Top Pro

Very good IDE

Cocos Creator (Cocos' IDE) comes with scene editing, UI editor, animations & particle editors and whatnot. It's also easy to use and pretty intuitive if you read the official documentation & tutorials. Way way better than the old CocoStudio. See More

Top Pro

Great video tutorials

Hundreds of video tutorials available. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Languages:C++; Lua; JavaScript; TypeScript (Creator only)

Dev platforms:Windows; macOS

Desktop targets:Windows; macOS; Linux; HTML5 (Creator only)

See All Specs

See All Experiences

345 61

score 55 · Answer 17

CopperCube

Top Pro

Allows creating 3D apps and games without programming

Top Pro

Good 3D editor

Includes easy to use 3D editor for quickly clicking together 3D games. See More

Top Pro

Native WebGL support

Can create 3D games as real WebGL apps, running inside websites. Doesn't use a cross compiler, so WebGL apps are small and download quickly. See More

Top Pro

Good terrain editor

CopperCube includes a terrain editor. Terrain can be drawn with height painting tools directly in the editor, textures can be painted quickly with automatic texture blending into the terrain. There are also tools for placing grass and bushes, and for distributing meshes automatically over the terrain. See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

CopperCube is available on Steam It was Greenlit. See More

Top Pro

Exports to irrlicht

It was also written by the founder of irrlicht, although it is not open source. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn and to use

Top Pro

Fast prototyping

You can quickly develop an experimental working model of the product (prototype), because the engine gives you access to a lot of prefabs, plugins and settings. And, you can use the visual programming to speed up the process, even if later you have to write code in order to improve the final product. See More

Top Pro

Oculus Rift support

Supports both DK2 and DK1. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh

Mobile targets:Android

Supported languages:Javascript; ActionScript 3

See All Specs

See All Experiences

55 14

score 532 · Answer 18

LÖVE

Top Pro

Active and very friendly community

The LÖVE forums are extremely helpful. With people checking the forums every day, it won't take long to receive answer to your questions on the Support board, receive feedback on games you post in the Projects board, as well as have a chat about the LÖVE engine while learning tricks to use in the very active General board. If you need an immediate answer though, or just want to chat, there is a very active and helpful IRC channel. See More

Top Con

Not very powerful

The engine has very few modules and only the really required one, you'll have to do almost everything from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Uses the fantastic Lua for scripting

Lua is an embeddable scripting language designed to be lightweight, fast yet powerful. It is used in major titles such as Civilization as well as a lot of indie games. Lua is very popular because it provides "meta language" features. You can implement object-oriented structures, or pure procedural functions, etc. It has a very simple C interface, and gives the engine developer a lot of flexibility in the language itself. Artists tend to love Lua too because it's very approachable, with plain and forgiving syntax. Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal license (the well-known MIT license). See More

Top Con

Game distribution is harder than it should

The process to create an executable could be streamlined: the dedicated wiki page is somewhat confusing, and the actual process either means relying on one of the various community-maintained tools or creating an executable manually for each platform. See More

Top Pro

Easy to understand and use

Lua2D handles loading the resources, reading input, playing sounds and displaying stuff on the screen. Only the logic is left for the developer to write. It also removes the overhead of having to use and learn a GUI game editor. All you need is a knowledge of Lua and your favourite text editor or IDE. See More

Top Con

More of an API than a game engine

It may come with graphical, audio and IO but it lack most features most game engines have such as UI system, pathfinding, etc. and you have to implement most of the stuff you might want manually. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS. See More

Top Con

Only for the very simple games

Top Pro

Open source and free

The LÖVE engine is licensed under The zlib/libpng License (which is very short and human readable) which allows you to use the source code and even modify it as long as you do not claim that the original source code is yours. You can obtain the code at this bitbucket repository and even help fix bugs and participate in the development of LÖVE. See More

Top Con

Documentation is very dry and technical

The site has plenty of tutorials, true, but they all read very technical, and explain very little. This might be too much for beginners, even for coding purposes, because of the fact that the specifics aren't explained well enough to learn effectively. The docs can be found frustrating to understand even the basics, such as tables or the like, because of how poorly they are explained, and how few examples are given before expecting you to be able to use them. See More

Top Pro

Many examples and libraries with source code

There are plenty of open source examples of games or components built by the community that are ready to use or learn from. See More

Top Con

Game distribution for Android is a pain in the Arse

It is like you're doing a science experiment. See More

Top Pro

Very good documentation

The LÖVE wiki provides full documentation of its easy to use Modules, which are conveniently located on the side bar of the wiki. It only takes seconds to find the module for love.keyboard, which provided a list of all functions along with arguments and examples where the function could be used. See More

Top Con

HTML5 support

Depends on love.js for HTML5 distribution which is old and incompatible with current Emscripten / LLVM version. See More

Top Pro

Great for prototyping

You can learn the basics very quickly and start making simple games in no time, even if you have no previous Lua knowledge. If you're a little experienced with LÖVE, you can prototype a 2D game with it in no time. See More

Top Con

Absolutely no GUI (no graphical interface)

This has no graphical interface at all, you have to know how to read script in order to know what you're looking at. After you've written the script for everything, you compile it to see the result. It's a very poor way to create a game, given how even most professional tools out there give you a GUI to work with and debug on the go. The lack of a GUI slows down the work by ten-fold, and it's just an inefficient use of your time. See More

Top Pro

Can develop within Android

It is possible to develop games directly on a tablet or cellphone with the Android system by using the experimental Android branch. See More

Top Con

The community seems juvenile

For example, some of the library include names such as HUMP, LUBE, AnAL. See More

Top Pro

Very good for education

That is a great tool for teaching novice programmers. Creating a game on LÖVE, you have to think about developing, not about the syntax of the language. See More

Top Pro

Many tutorials on the internet

Has several tutorials in several languages on the internet, mainly on Youtube. See More

Top Pro

C++ and Lua one of the best languages for gamedev

Because all professionals in gamedev use C++, and Lua the fastest scripting lang. See More

Top Pro

Cute name

So much love. See More

Specs

License:zlib

Languages:C++, Lua 5.1

Dev platforms:Windows Vista+ , macOS 10.7+, Linux, Android 4.0+

Desktop targets:Windows Vista+, macOS 10.7+, Linux

See All Specs

See All Experiences

532 92

score 173 · Answer 19

Unity

Top Pro

Great community support

Unity is bolstered by a huge, helpful community via its official forums, wiki, Unity Answers, and Unity Asset Store; plus the most-subscribed subreddit of any game engine. See More

Top Con

No native editor for Linux

Though it builds for Linux, the Unity Editor runs only on Windows and Mac. Some users have successfully run the Windows version on Linux via Wine. See More

Top Pro

OUYA support

Top Pro

Over 20 platforms

Unity offers over 20 platforms for publishing including mobile, console, web, VR, and more. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Not tailored for specific types of games (like Unreal...), so it won't get in your way if you want to make something unique. See More

Top Pro

Well structured

Overall, a coherent engine with a rational approach. People who complain a lot about being forced to hack around it usually do not read the docs, like the one that describes orders of execution, or specific functions hooks and such. Some like to say it lacks raw power where people who are used to standard optimizations have no problem. For example It is not uncommon to encounter users who complain about low FPS but forgot to activate occlusion, flag static elements, activate animations culling, and so on. As for complaints about C#, people who are transitioning from C++ were already bad at C++ before being bad at C#. They often come from the PC world where the sheer power of today's machines is very forgiving compared to the platforms we had to develop for in the 80s~90s. One of their errors is for example to never read this doc. See More

Top Pro

Very optimized

Unity runs very smoothly even on systems that are considered "weak" by today's standards. See More

Top Pro

Lots of assets can be found in the Asset Store

For those developers who can't afford an artist, or aren't skilled enough to create their own art, Unity features an Asset Store full of a wide variety of free and paid assets that can be easily added to a game. The Asset Store has more than just music and art. It also has code and modules that can be added to games including unique lighting or GUI systems. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection. See More

Top Pro

Works with 3rd party IDEs

You can use any C# IDE for it, but the ones tested which have Unity integration are: Microsoft Visual Studio MonoDevelop Visual Studio Code (much faster than VS, but a bit harder to set up for Unity development) JetBrains Rider (very fast, has lots of functionality and best Unity integration, but it is not free) See More

Top Pro

Flexibility is provided by a strong component programming model

Top Pro

Has a great animation system

Unity provides a great state machine animation system called Mechanim allowing to separate animation from the model and assign the same animoations to different models. See More

Top Pro

Powerful standard shaders

The built in standard shader in Unity 5 is incredibly optimized and supports PBS/PBR. See More

Top Pro

Allows for rapid prototyping

Unity's modular system and usability allows for quickly developing a prototype of an idea. It has features like drag & drop editing, shaders, animation and other systems already in place to allow diving right into developing a game. See More

Top Pro

Easy learning curve

The way the editor is structured, by setting scripts on objects, and the use of a high-level language, C#, makes it easy to learn. See More

Top Pro

Can create custom forms and tools

Top Pro

Very popular

Unity is a proven game engine. It is used by a wide range of developers - from small indies to triple-A companies such as Microsoft, Paradox, Square Enix and Sega. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Unity3D provides an exhaustive documentation where everything is given a full description supplied by a number of examples as well as video and text tutorials and live training sessions to understand the ins and outs of the engine. In addition there's an ever-growing community that can offer advice to help resolve any situations that may arise. Along with the official Unity resources, there are many high quality (and often free) third party tutorials available. See More

Top Pro

Great editor

The editor GUI is very powerful and intuitive. It allows pausing gameplay and manipulating the scene at any time as well as progress gameplay frame by frame. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection. This allows it to be more powerful than other, simpler drag-and-drop engines such as Game Maker Studio, although it can take a bit more experience to learn the workflow. See More

Top Pro

As of Unity 5 all engine features are free for everyone

As long as the company makes $100k or less, Unity's free version can be used to release games without purchasing the pro version. See More

Top Pro

Supports 2D and 3D

With Unity knowledge of just one engine is needed to be able to create both 2D and 3D games. See More

Top Pro

Great community

Great Community support through Forums and Unity Answers. See More

Top Pro

Provides access to a huge list of assets through Asset Store

There's an Asset Store, providing free and paid assets (including components). It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection. See More

See All Experiences

173 38

score 170 · Answer 20

Stride

Top Pro

Good looking and fast

Looking nearly as good as Unreal Engine 4, but rendering significantly faster. See More

Top Con

No terrain editor

Unless you like working on planes, there is no terrain support. See More

Top Pro

No royalties or licensing fees

Top Con

Editor is Windows only

Since version 1.7, Linux can be targeted for runtime. The editor for the engine is available only to Windows though. See More

Top Pro

Projects are normal Visual Studio solutions

No proprietary project format, so it works with all the official .NET tooling. See More

Top Con

Small user community

Unity and UE have a vast amount of user community. See More

Top Pro

Supports Visual Studio

Top Con

Does not currently support Playstation or Switch games

Top Pro

Very modern render engine

Top Con

Iteration may be slower than with other engines due to longer "build" times when certain changes are made

Top Pro

Powerful 3D Rendering Engine

Supports Vulkan. You can achieve good quality as in Unity3d and Unreal Engine See More

Top Con

Shader system require's overhaul

Shader's are not easy to get to grips with and Stride's shader system. Needs overhauling for easier use. See More

Top Pro

Straightforward editor

Stride provides a simple and clean working environment for designing games. See More

Top Pro

Community seems friendly and is growing

Top Pro

Engine AND Scripting are both C#

Since the engine is written in the same language as the scripting, there is no weird mix of technologies as other engines have. See More

Top Pro

Supports Vulkan

Currently the only well known open-source game engine that supports Vulkan, and probably one of the only. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn and use C#

Top Pro

Multiple Starter Templates

The engine comes packed with multiole example projects to help you get started. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Languages:C#

API:Vulkan, DirectX 11, DirectX 12, OpenGL

Dev platforms:Windows

See All Specs

See All Experiences

170 39