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What are the best 2D C# game engines?

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7 Options Considered

7 Options ConsideredPriceLanguagesDev platforms
Unity
C#Windows; OSX
Godot
C++(library) C#, GDscript(like python)Windows; OSX; Linux
MonoGame
C#–
Flat Red Ball
c#Windows
Duality
C#Windows
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Unity

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Andris Pelcbergs
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...
Andris Pelcbergs
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.
Andris Pelcbergs
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.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Art Asset pipeline supports a lot of tools 

•••
Assets can be imported from many different formats including .FBX, .OBJ, .Blend, .Max
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Easy to learn

•••
Because of its popularity, there are a great deal of tutorials available to help learn how to make great games. Even without knowing how to program there are assets in the asset store that can help with that by allowing linking scripts inside the game engine.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Works with 3rd party IDEs 

•••
3rd party IDEs, like Visual Studio, can be used to write code for Unity.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Usable for small and large projects

•••
Games have been made in Unity at all levels of the Video Game industry. If you want to make games, this is a great engine to learn. Learning Unity will teach you the basics for any engine, and if you want to get a job at a big studio there is a chance that you will be working in this engine there...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Royalty-free, one-time licensing fee 

•••
Once a license is bought there are no additional costs that need to be taken into consideration.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Great community 

•••
Great Community support through Forums and Unity Answers.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Cross-platform

•••
Unity 3D supports 12 platforms in all, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Web, iOS, Android, and even consoles.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Allows a choice of scripting languages to use

•••
Unity provides a selection of programming languages depending on preferences or knowledge. C# (CSharp) is arguably the most powerful, although the majority of tutorial languages are for Javascript.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

2D performance could be better

•••
Performance can have real issues with 2D games. Since Unity is actually a 3D game engine, it drags a lot of overhead with because of this. For example, for mobile , one could never achieve the performance of more specialized 2D engines with Unity.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Most knowledge acquired by using Unity is applicable only to Unity

•••
Unity3D uses very unique approach for doing things, most of knowledge acquired while using it, would completely non transferable to other engines.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Jaden T
Top Con

The official documentation isn't the best

•••
Many video "tutorials" for new users, only explain the basic functions of Unity as they relate to the engine itself. None of them actually show you 'how' to do something, just what is possible in the UI. This makes it rather difficult for a new user to understand the program, and...
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Closed source 

•••
Pretty much you're at the mercy of the developers wherever they decide to take the engine you must follow.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Comparatively high learning curve 

•••
Although C#, JS, and Boo have documentation available online, it could still be difficult to wrap your head around the library and Unity's component based system.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Mobile builds (Android, iOS) take about 8MB at least 

•••
Even a Blank Project, Needs 8MB for the APK file (on Android).
See 15 more Pros & ConsSee 15 more Pros & Cons

Godot

Weatherby
Top Pro

Lightweight, yet powerful

•••
The game engine is really small in size, but it doesn't lack anything compared to GameMaker (Another Great Engine which sadly doesn't support C#) and other famous Game Engines.
Weatherby
Top Pro

Uses independant 2D and 3D Engines

•••
Compare it to the elephant in the room - Unity. Unity is much better documented and has manier tutorials for different matters, but when it comes to the 2D engine - it just uses its 3D one and thus creates a lot of performance issues.
WhiteLilac
Weatherby
Top Pro

Beginner Friendly

•••
Godot is very welcoming as a Game Engine. It wouldn't take anyone more than an hour and a half to get comfortable with the Engine. It has many already implemented Physics options (much like Unity).
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Really good community

•••
The community is great and really cares about the engine. It is easy to get help and to be part of Godot's future.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Friendly towards Version Control Systems

•••
The engine is build not only to support version control but to really use it. Scene files for example which usually get compiled into some sort of unreadable data stay in a text format - that way you can actually see your changes in a version control system like Git.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Lightweight

•••
The executable is portable and less than 40 MB in size.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Editor and runtime are fully cross-platform

•••
You can run Godot on all 3 major operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux) and build your game to all available platforms from each without any platform-specific work needed. All platforms including Linux are supported first class.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Instancing and node concept makes sense

•••
The node and the instancing concept work very well and helps developers to structure content efficiently.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
Godot is licensed under MIT license. Anyone can grab the source from https://github.com/godotengine/godot, and compile the engine themselves.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Under constant development

•••
This engine barely released one year ago has more than 1000 forks on github and about 100 developers. Not only that just a bit of browsing trough issues you will quickly find out the dev community loves new esp free technology and does not shy away from completely rewriting parts of the engine. The...
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks

•••
Godot has a mature 2D engine with many features used by modern 2D games.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Built-in physics

•••
Add physics to 2D and 3D scenes, through rigid and static bodies, characters, raycasts, vehicles and more.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Integrated animation editor

•••
Every property can be animated.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Unified game editor interface

•••
All the game developing work is done inside one program: the engine editor. This feature is something only high end engines have. Even the scripting is done in the same program. No need for Eclipse or other front end editors.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Can be deployed to multiple platforms

•••
Deploy games to desktops (Windows/OS X/Linux), smartphones (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and the web (HTML5 via Emscripten).
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Fun to use

•••
An important aspect that can't be grasped without using the engine for a few days. The Interface is evolving nicely and making games is just fun.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Drag & drop interface

•••
Many parts of the editor allow you to drag & drop, which makes working with assets and scene trees a joy.
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

User friendly UI for all your team

•••
Non-programmers (musicians, artists, etc) can join the development easily.
WhiteLilac
Weatherby
Top Pro

VisualStudio

•••
You're not limited to using the implemented text editor (Though you have to navigate your way to the VS project that Godot creates for you).
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Internationalization of the editor

•••
You can change the language shown in menus. Godot translations: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/godot-engine/godot/
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Easy to learn scripting language

•••
Godot has their own scripting language called GDscript. The scripting language is easy to learn with python-like format, but it is not python. More like a mix of Javascript, PHP, C++. It's very powerful, easy to learn, and it's free of unnecessary things because it's designed for this p...
WhiteLilac
Top Pro

Supports C#

•••
Since October 2017, Godot supports C# as a scripting language.
Weatherby
Top Con

Lack of Tutorials

•••
The 3.0 alpha version is basicly impossible (for now ) to get in to without a proper tutorial (be it video, article, etc.) and because the 3.0 v is very new and not even stable - it doesn't have too much video tutorials
Weatherby
Top Con

Poor Documentation

•••
As of now 3.0 is not yet released and so it lacks a big portion of documentation needed to get to speed with C#.
WhiteLilac
Weatherby
Top Con

If it's not 3.0 - don't count me in

•••
The GDScript Language that Godot comes with is pretty simple (It shares a lot of similarities with Python) and that's an issue if you don't like Python.
WhiteLilac
Top Con

Difficult to optimize

•••
Godot has an OOP architecture. Everything is an object internally and data is spread among many classes, thus it's difficult to optimize (i.e. not cache friendly, difficuly to vectorize or paralellize, etc). Read about "Data Oriented Design" for more info about the problems and solut...
WhiteLilac
Top Con

OSX app is a mess

•••
Instead of one contained folder/file with an icon per normal it is a mess of files which is not at all suitable or distributable without further work after every compilation.
WhiteLilac
Top Con

NoAdmob or other AdNetwork support

•••
Godot has no native support for implementing advertisements into your game.
WhiteLilac
Top Con

No built-in way to import atlases

•••
Godot does not have an easy and automatic way to import atlases created by other tools. However, there are plugins that can be used to import atlases from other engines.
WhiteLilac
Top Con

Tileset management could be more efficient

•••
The tileset creation and management is lacking common features found in more developed tileset managers. However, it features support for Tiled - the only downside being that it is an external program.
See 28 more Pros & ConsSee 28 more Pros & Cons

MonoGame

Flat Red Ball

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GeneralOne
Top Pro

Source is available

•••
danial abdl
Top Pro

Free

•••
Chloe Montanez
Jared Bagley
Top Pro

Deployment options

•••
Syncs projects to Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and Xbox.
Endi Sukaj
danial abdl
Top Pro

Easy to use

•••
GeneralOne
Top Pro

Extremely good documentation

•••
Chloe Montanez
Domenic Datti
Top Pro

Live chat room

•••
You can ask questions and get answers in the chat room with a vibrant small community of developers.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 5 more ProsSee 5 more Pros

Duality

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Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Very extensible

•••
Because both Core and Editor are completely plugin-based, Duality not only incorporates a clean and modular design, but is also very extensible - even if it isn't Open Source. In fact, most of the standard editing capabilities come in form of Editor plugins.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Open source 

•••
The full source code is available on GitHub, where the framework is actively developed. All of the editor, core and plugin code is written in C#.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Great editor 

•••
Duality includes a powerful visual editing system that can be used for previewing, integrating, editing and testing game content.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Live reload of code and assets

•••
Supports live reloading of code and assets whenever on of those two is changed.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Built-in physics and lighting

•••
Duality has built-in support for physics and lighting.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Friendly to version control systems 

•••
It can be configured to serialize all data in a text-based format, which has been structurally optimized for version control systems.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Used in commercial projects 

•••
It has been used in a production environment without burning the place to the ground. Supposedly artist-proof editor workflow with an API for tailoring the system to fit your team.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Requires windows for development

•••
Duality only supports Windows for a development environment.
See 6 more ProsSee 6 more Pros

Wave

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Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Supports coding in C#, F# and Visual Basic  

•••
Wave Engine explicitly supports all three core .Net Platform languages.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Extensive learning material 

•••
In addition to online API documentation, the Wave Engine team provides tutorials via IndieDB, plus sample projects and "QuickStarters" via GitHub.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Integrates with popular IDEs  

•••
Wave integrates with Visual Studio on Windows, Xamarin Studio on Windows and Mac, and Monodevelop on Linux.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Many components are open source 

•••
Several core components and official extensions of the Wave Engine are publicly hosted on GitHub.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Oculus Rift support  

•••
The Wave Engine team provides an official, open-source Oculus Rift extension via GitHub.
Endi Sukaj
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Con

Cannot compile natively for Android and iOS devices

•••
For iOS and Android Building, you need to use Xamarin for compiling.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros

UDK

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Good lighting support

•••
UDK has great lighting support.
Andris Pelcbergs
Top Pro

Large toolset  

•••
UDK has an extremely large toolset that allows creating almost anything without having to use a 3rd party tool or plugin.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

DevKit only runs on Windows

•••
Even though UDK can deploy games to run on multiple platforms, including Mac, it does not feature support for development on Mac.
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro
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Recommended 5 months ago
As of writing this Godot 3.0 (The first version supporting C# , VisualScript, etc,) is still in alpha 2. So that means that the documentation is not ideal and not as simplified as some people would like it (Let alone the massive lack of video-tutorials).
Pro
 VisualStudio
Pro
 Uses independant 2D and 3D Engines
Pro
 Lightweight, yet powerful
Con
 If it's not 3.0 - don't count me in
Pro
 Beginner Friendly
Con
 Poor Documentation
Con
 Lack of Tutorials
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