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Add to SafariWhen comparing MonoGame vs FNA, the Slant community recommends MonoGame for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D C# game engines?” MonoGame is ranked 1st while FNA is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose MonoGame is:
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.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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.
Pro Managed code
By leveraging C# and other .NET languages on Microsoft and Mono platforms you can write modern, fast, and reliable game code.
Pro Good community
The community MonoGame has to offer is helpful and mature.
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.
Pro Performance
FNA is incredibly performant on desktop platforms.
Pro Near-exact reimplementation of XNA 4
Pro Rapidly evolving
With a very active development team, FNA has support for OpenGL and Metal, with Direct3D 11 and Vulkan support on the way, as well as more platform support.
Pro Barely contains bugs
Pro Proven tool
FNA has been used in a multitude of titles, ranging from Mercenary Kings: Reloaded, Terraria and Escape Goat, all the way to Celeste, Streets of Rage 4 and Fez.
Pro MonoGame-compatible
FNA projects are very compatible with MonoGame.
Cons
Con Slow rate of updates
Versions 3.9 is overdue by a year, and version 4.0 is set to release in 2040.
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.
Con Not exactly a "game engine" by definition
It provides you with everything you need to make a game engine, but isn't one in itself.
