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Ask HN: Released games built on FOSS engines?
77 points by gsuuon on Oct 17, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 51 comments
Is there a list anywhere of released games built on FOSS game engines?



SteamDB is great for this sort of thing:

GZDoom: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GZDoom/

Godot: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/

Love: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Love2D/

FNA: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/FNA/

OGRE: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/OGRE/

Torque: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Torque/


Fascinating, and if I go to their tech home page, I see this ranking for which tech powers the most games https://steamdb.info/tech/

  Unity 38437
  Unreal 10504
  GameMaker 4130
  RPGMaker 2700
  RenPy 1973
  Godot 922
So there are 4x more games made in Unity compared to the runner-up Unreal. And both of them dwarf Godot which is the only other name I recognize in that list.


GameMaker is a 2D game engine used by a number of highly rated indie games like Undertale, Hyper Light Drifter, Katana Zero, and Risk of Rain.

RPGMaker is a piece of software that lets you make top-down JRPGs generally in the style of the 2D Final Fantasy games. Because it takes that opinionated approach it's widely considered very easy to use. You're not fiddling with e.g. a physics engine when you know what genre and style of play you're doing doesn't need it.

Likewise RenPy is designed to make it simple to build Visual Novel style games, and as the name implies it uses Python, so between using an easy, popular high level language and taking an opinionated approach tailored to one genre/playstyle, it's a highly productive and approachable engine for newcomers and indie devs with limited time.


Isn't the Build engine also FOSS now? Edit: it isn't

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Build/

IdTech 1-4 are all also FOSS these days:

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/idTech1/

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/idTech2/

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/idTech2_5/

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/idTech3/

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/idTech4/


Build is not FLOSS: http://eduke32.com/buildlic.txt

Edit: non-commercial-only, distribution only allowed via the Internet, etc.


Ah, my bad. Source-available, not Open-Source


This is great. All their detection logic is open source: https://github.com/SteamDatabase/FileDetectionRuleSets


Huh. They’re sorted by rating. And like 7 of the top 10 Godot games are about cats.


I'm not sure if there's a complete list to be found, but engines usually have a showcase section on their website:

- Godot: https://godotengine.org/showcase/

- Löve (doesn't have a separate page, but showcases a few games at the bottom of the page): https://love2d.org

- DragonRuby: https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game/samples

- Haxe (though not an engine per se): https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/


Also LibGDX - many of the games are Very Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, too:

https://libgdx.com/showcase/


I've used LibGDX a few years ago. It was easy to create a basic game, but it seems to be moribund today. Most of the showcase projects are 4-5 years old.


LibGDX is still alive and well, and just released a new version recently. The API is relatively "finished" which imo is very nice and means old tutorials still work, and there's some exiting things maybe happening with getting the kotlin version to work on web without GWT (which is java only)


This is cool, is there even a mildly successful recent game made with it?


Sandship (not sure when released) was updated in Feb and has over a million downloads: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockbite.s...

Zombie Age III has 10m downloads.

Deep Town: Idle Mining Tycoon has 10+m downloads (updated this year).

Space Haven is from 2020 with over 6k reviews on Steam.

(Open Source) Unciv has 6k stars: https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv


Cool! Thanks for following up. I wonder if there is a room for LibGDX going forward now that Godot is getting big. I expect to see some consolidation among open source engines, with Godot becoming the big all-purpose engine and things like Love and Ren'py for more niche use cases.


Godot is very different. It's closer to a Unity competitor. Most games, should go with Godot.

LibGDX is more low level. It's like a java wrapper around OpenGL with some nice libraries for: math/sprites/algorithms/gc-friendly data structures/other structures (octrees etc) and abstracts away platform specific details in most cases so you can have the same code for android/ios/desktop/web.

Ingress is also LibGDX, but they switched to Unity for Pokemon GO.


Godot and LibGDX have pretty different goals, I don't see them as competing


Slay the Spire


Love -> https://stabyourself.net/mari0/


Godot is crazy, might think simple 2D games but no it can be used as a VR compositor as well

edit: well compositing may not occur on its own but Godot VR is a thing/easy starter


Simplist and fastest way to get vr code up and running is: https://lovr.org/


Dragonruby isn’t OSS.


you’re right, I misspoke. Thanks!


Terraria was made using Microsoft's XNA framework but later transitioned to the foss FNA framework. Same story for Fez, Celeste, Bastion, and (I think) Stardew Valley. Full list is at https://www.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?page=Portfolio/Tools...

Papers Please and Dead Cells were made using Haxe with OpenFL as the framework (not completely sure).

These are only the games I've played that are built on FOSS engines. I'm sure there are many more.


Just to confirm regarding Stardew Valley, Wikipedia says it was initially created in XNA framework and then later ported to MonoGame (also FOSS).


Myvmistake. Thanks for correcting!


I think dead cells uses HEAPS not OpenFL


Ah my bad. But doesn't Heaps also use OpenFL under the hood?


On a similar note, released games with open sourced code: https://osgameclones.com/?tag=official

https://torque3d.org was used on Airship Dragoon, Marble Blast Gold, Penny Arcade Adventures, Legions: Overdrive and descends from the original Tribes engine.

Hellbreaker, Bit Champs with https://u3d.io

And plenty of successful games with Ogre, including Torchlight: https://www.ogre3d.org/showcase


Some popular games were built with LibGDX[1]: Slay the Spire, Mindustry, Space Haven, and others[2].

[1]: https://libgdx.com/

[2]: https://libgdx.com/showcase/


Oh neat! I'm currently playing Space Haven.


SteamDB detects game engines based on games’ file manifests.

https://steamdb.info/tech/

It’s not perfect because some engines (like Godot) have export options to bundle games into a single executable that SteamDB can’t use for engine detection.


The one with the most is MonoGame. So many indie games made with MonoGame. Close second is Godot (and climbing fast). A few have used Ogre3D (torchlight series) and have used libGDX (pixel dungeon) or lwjgl (Minecraft).

If you are wondering what modern open source engine to use, Godot seems to be it. If you are wondering if any FOSS engines ship games, the answer is an overwhelming yes. If you are wondering how to write an engine, any of these OSS engines will teach you what you need to know (or at least get you going).


Trial is an open source game engine written in Common Lisp and has a released game on Steam called Kandria:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32043026


This is a list of released, open source games created in Go using the Ebitengine game engine:

https://github.com/sedyh/awesome-ebitengine#games


Godot is a FOSS game engine afaik, and their website has a “showcase”: https://godotengine.org/showcase/


Surprised YOMI Hustle isn’t listed here. Relatively popular game made in Godot


Stardew Valley was using Microsoft's XNA but switched to the FOSS MonoGame or FNA.


Ren'Py is also extremely popular, if not for the short of thing you did not mean :) It's the most popular OSS engine according to SteamDB.

https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/RenPy/


Cruelty Squad. Made with Godot.


Not necessarily the type of game you had in mind; but must be high up on the concurrent online players https://lichess.org/


Wargroove's Engine is Apache licensed: https://github.com/amzeratul/halley


FreeCiv uses its own FOSS engine[0], can keep you occupied for days.

[0] http://freeciv.org/


Oh, I forgot a few major ones:

https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge was used in No Man's Sky, Hades and Starfield.

https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics is the physics engine in Horizon Forbidden West.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_Strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game...


Vampire Survivors was created in Phaser and later ported to Unity for the Steam release. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/vampire-survivors-swit...


And supposedly new features are written in JavaScript and then ported over to Unity.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVdR8mJrds


Depending on your definition of FOSS game engine there's an incomplete list at https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx for just that FOSS intermediate rendering library (includes Minecraft)


Well, there's ContentSB for Minetest [1]. I admit it is a rather specific game engine, though.

[1] https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game


I know I own (all on Steam) and actively play a few games built on Godot: Brotato, Turing Complete, Virtual Circuit Board, Halls of Torment.


Van Life Game was made with phaser3 and vueJS

https://vanlifegame.com




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