- Sep 2, 2018
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As the title says, this is a small list. Going after most of the available engines would take waaaaay too much time.
The gist of the list is that ALL things listed are FREE without the need to pirate it. Most of them are also open source, which means you can personally tinker and tamper with the engine.
Sept 13 2023 edit: As Unity recently announced they want to fuck their customers without lube, I've made some additions to this list (Stride, Fyrox) and scratched Unity out. We'll see if/when/how they'll backpedal out of that.
Visual Novel:
RPG (Maker-like):
Platformer:
General Purpose:
Frameworks (these are programming libraries that have most of the heavy lifting done, so to speak. Ignore these if you don't want to spend the majority of your time typing code)
The gist of the list is that ALL things listed are FREE without the need to pirate it. Most of them are also open source, which means you can personally tinker and tamper with the engine.
Sept 13 2023 edit: As Unity recently announced they want to fuck their customers without lube, I've made some additions to this list (Stride, Fyrox) and scratched Unity out. We'll see if/when/how they'll backpedal out of that.
Visual Novel:
- Ren'Py -
You must be registered to see the links- No presentation needed. FOSS
- Tuesday JS -
You must be registered to see the links- Has a visual editor, so it can be useful to connect scenes and see where each one is leading to. Since it's fully HTML5, it will run on anything with a browser. FOSS
- Narrat -
You must be registered to see the links- Seems to be the thing everyone making those "go to this place of the city" would want. Offers skills, inventory and quests out of the box. Exports to HTML/Javascript like Tuesday above. FOSS
- PixiVN -
You must be registered to see the links- Based on PixiJS, so it'll also run pretty much anywhere. Can also work as a point and click adventure engine. FOSS
- OpenWebGal -
You must be registered to see the links- FOSS japanese tool. The visual editor runs on the browser, can export to web, windows and android.
- Seevn -
You must be registered to see the links- It's a visual editor made with Unity. Less than ideal, to be honest.
RPG (Maker-like):
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You must be registered to see the links(what a mouthful!) - If you ever wanted to make an RPG with a tool whose interface looks straight out of 1994, this is it! Uses FreeBASIC for programming
- Solarus - For making action-RPGs like SNES Zelda. Uses Lua for programming
You must be registered to see the links
Platformer:
- Moondust -
You must be registered to see the links
General Purpose:
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You must be registered to see the links- My personal favorite. The editor is less than 300mb and runs on all of the big desktop OSs. Has plenty of features for using sprite animation and bone animation. Takes a while to get used to it. The GDScript is pretty much Python. Can also use Mono/C#
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You must be registered to see the links
- Not entirely free, but easy enough to learn and use. Optimization can be a problem. Keep in mind that anything from their asset store is off-limits for making games with any kind of sexual content, so you'll need to get assets elsewhere.LOL DISREGARD THAT THEY SUCK COCKS -
You must be registered to see the links- No programming required, visual scripting. Though you'll still need to know logic and stuff to make your game work.
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You must be registered to see the links- If you ever wanted a Game Maker clone, this is the closest you'll get. It can be an absolute pain to set up. The project feels half abandoned (probably is), though their github is kinda-sorta active, probably only 1 person maintaining it at this point. Massive kudos to whoever they are!
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You must be registered to see the links- If your programming skills are entirely in Pascal, this is what you'll want to use. (Fun fact: stuff written in Pascal tends to compete toe to toe with C and C++ in speed. (I wish I knew that and other tidbits about Pascal back in 2008, like how it was the language used to make Jazz Jackrabbit >_>))
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You must be registered to see the links- Possibly the best alternative for making 3D games if you're good with C#. MIT license, so they're never going to pull a Unity on your ass
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You must be registered to see the links- Rust based engine, allows for both 2D and 3D development. MIT license
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You must be registered to see the links- For those of you coming from Ren'Py, this might work fine, as it uses python for the logic. MIT License. (Added July 2024)
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You must be registered to see the links- Can do 2D and 3D games and the page showcases how it powers Dead Cells, Evoland and Northgard. Uses Haxe language, which originated from Action Script. Old Flash developers should feel at home with this (Added July 2024)
Frameworks (these are programming libraries that have most of the heavy lifting done, so to speak. Ignore these if you don't want to spend the majority of your time typing code)
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You must be registered to see the links- Make games using Lua and nothing else. People complain that Lua's slow, but really, you'll be fine. Lua's usually equivalent to Python so, unless you're planning on making your game throw over 9000 particle effects per frame, it'll run better than javascript and anything using electronJS
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You must be registered to see the links- Based on the Corona SDK, also uses Lua and focuses on making 2D games for windows, HTML and mobile. It's easier to create a compiled executable or apk installer compared to LOVE above (Added July 2024)
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You must be registered to see the links- A java game programmer's best friend. Two games I enjoy a lot were made with it: Unciv and Mindustry.
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You must be registered to see the links- A C# game programmer's best friend. Some grognards might remember how it originated off XNA
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You must be registered to see the links* - Not free, but you can get a free license under certain circumstances (near the bottom of the page). I got one since I did qualify and Amir did reply with the link very quickly. Still haven't gotten around toying with it, as I never worked with Ruby before.
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You must be registered to see the links- For those of you that want an alternative to SDL2. Works with a fuckload of languages, from the common (C family, Java) to the uncommon (Crystal, Nim, D) to the utter arcane (Gforth, OCaml). Also works with FreeBASIC, so you can probably mix it with that OHRRPGCE from above, if you're brave!
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