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Ask HN: Released games built on FOSS engines?

77 points by gsuuon 3y ago

Is there a list anywhere of released games built on FOSS game engines?

djmips 3y ago
Depending on your definition of FOSS game engine there's an incomplete list at https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx for just that FOSS intermediate rendering library (includes Minecraft)
pixelatedindex 3y ago
Godot is a FOSS game engine afaik, and their website has a “showcase”: https://godotengine.org/showcase/ https://godotengine.org/showcase/
- jasonjmcghee 3y ago
  Surprised YOMI Hustle isn’t listed here. Relatively popular game made in Godot
pdpi 3y ago
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.
sirwhinesalot 3y ago
Stardew Valley was using Microsoft's XNA but switched to the FOSS MonoGame or FNA.
sxn 3y ago
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/ 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 https://love2d.org - DragonRuby: https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game/samples https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game/samples - Haxe (though not an engine per se): https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/ https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/
- winrid 3y ago
  Also LibGDX - many of the games are Very Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, too: https://libgdx.com/showcase/ https://libgdx.com/showcase/
  - glimshe 3y ago
    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.
    - spencerflem 3y ago
      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)
      - glimshe 3y ago
        This is cool, is there even a mildly successful recent game made with it?
        winrid 3y ago
        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.sandship&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 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 https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
        glimshe 3y ago
        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.
ivanjermakov 3y ago
Some popular games were built with LibGDX[1]: Slay the Spire, Mindustry, Space Haven, and others[2]. [1]: https://libgdx.com/ https://libgdx.com/ [2]: https://libgdx.com/showcase/ https://libgdx.com/showcase/
- gsuuon 3y ago
  Oh neat! I'm currently playing Space Haven.
MenhirMike 3y ago
Wargroove's Engine is Apache licensed: https://github.com/amzeratul/halley https://github.com/amzeratul/halley
subtra3t 3y ago
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#01_FNA.txt 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.
- msk-lywenn 3y ago
  I think dead cells uses HEAPS not OpenFL
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    Ah my bad. But doesn't Heaps also use OpenFL under the hood?
- Zecc 3y ago
  Just to confirm regarding Stardew Valley, Wikipedia says it was initially created in XNA framework and then later ported to MonoGame (also FOSS).
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    Myvmistake. Thanks for correcting!
kruhft 3y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32043026
klaussilveira 3y ago
On a similar note, released games with open sourced code: https://osgameclones.com/?tag=official https://osgameclones.com/?tag=official https://torque3d.org 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 https://u3d.io And plenty of successful games with Ogre, including Torchlight: https://www.ogre3d.org/showcase https://www.ogre3d.org/showcase
ZiiS 3y ago
Not necessarily the type of game you had in mind; but must be high up on the concurrent online players https://lichess.org/ https://lichess.org/
reidjs 3y ago
Van Life Game was made with phaser3 and vueJS https://vanlifegame.com https://vanlifegame.com
astrobe_ 3y ago
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 https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game
justsomehnguy 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game...
Alekhine 3y ago
Cruelty Squad. Made with Godot.
Quot 3y ago
SteamDB detects game engines based on games’ file manifests. https://steamdb.info/tech/ 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.
frozenlettuce 3y ago
Vampire Survivors was created in Phaser and later ported to Unity for the Steam release. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/vampire-survivors-switching-to-new-game-engine-on-august-17/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/vampire-survivors-swit...
- james-skemp 3y ago
  And supposedly new features are written in JavaScript and then ported over to Unity. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVdR8mJrds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVdR8mJrds
tslocum 3y ago
This is a list of released, open source games created in Go using the Ebitengine game engine: https://github.com/sedyh/awesome-ebitengine#games https://github.com/sedyh/awesome-ebitengine#games
dleslie 3y ago
SteamDB is great for this sort of thing: GZDoom: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GZDoom/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GZDoom/ Godot: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/ Love: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Love2D/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Love2D/ FNA: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/FNA/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/FNA/ OGRE: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/OGRE/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/OGRE/ Torque: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Torque/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Torque/
- klaussilveira 3y ago
  This is great. All their detection logic is open source: https://github.com/SteamDatabase/FileDetectionRuleSets https://github.com/SteamDatabase/FileDetectionRuleSets
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Huh. They’re sorted by rating. And like 7 of the top 10 Godot games are about cats.
- samspenc 3y ago
  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/ 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.
  - entropicdrifter 3y ago
    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.
wincy 3y ago
FreeCiv uses its own FOSS engine[0], can keep you occupied for days. [0] http://freeciv.org/ http://freeciv.org/
reactordev 3y ago
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).
przemub 3y ago
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/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/RenPy/
klaussilveira 3y ago
Oh, I forgot a few major ones: https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge was used in No Man's Sky, Hades and Starfield. https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics is the physics engine in Horizon Forbidden West.

77 points by gsuuon 3y ago

Is there a list anywhere of released games built on FOSS game engines?

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

pixelatedindex 3y ago

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

jasonjmcghee 3y ago
Surprised YOMI Hustle isn’t listed here. Relatively popular game made in Godot

pdpi 3y ago

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.

sirwhinesalot 3y ago

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

sxn 3y ago

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/ 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 https://love2d.org - DragonRuby: https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game/samples https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game/samples - Haxe (though not an engine per se): https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/ https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

winrid 3y ago
Also LibGDX - many of the games are Very Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, too: https://libgdx.com/showcase/ https://libgdx.com/showcase/
- glimshe 3y ago
  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.
  - spencerflem 3y ago
    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)
    - glimshe 3y ago
      This is cool, is there even a mildly successful recent game made with it?
      - winrid 3y ago
        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.sandship&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 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 https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
        glimshe 3y ago
        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.

ivanjermakov 3y ago

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

gsuuon 3y ago
Oh neat! I'm currently playing Space Haven.

MenhirMike 3y ago

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

subtra3t 3y ago

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#01_FNA.txt 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.

msk-lywenn 3y ago
I think dead cells uses HEAPS not OpenFL
- subtra3t 3y ago
  Ah my bad. But doesn't Heaps also use OpenFL under the hood?
Zecc 3y ago
Just to confirm regarding Stardew Valley, Wikipedia says it was initially created in XNA framework and then later ported to MonoGame (also FOSS).
- subtra3t 3y ago
  Myvmistake. Thanks for correcting!

kruhft 3y ago

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

klaussilveira 3y ago

On a similar note, released games with open sourced code: https://osgameclones.com/?tag=official https://osgameclones.com/?tag=official https://torque3d.org 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 https://u3d.io And plenty of successful games with Ogre, including Torchlight: https://www.ogre3d.org/showcase https://www.ogre3d.org/showcase

ZiiS 3y ago

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

reidjs 3y ago

Van Life Game was made with phaser3 and vueJS https://vanlifegame.com https://vanlifegame.com

astrobe_ 3y ago

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

justsomehnguy 3y ago

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

Alekhine 3y ago

Cruelty Squad. Made with Godot.

Quot 3y ago

SteamDB detects game engines based on games’ file manifests. https://steamdb.info/tech/ 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.

frozenlettuce 3y ago

Vampire Survivors was created in Phaser and later ported to Unity for the Steam release. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/vampire-survivors-switching-to-new-game-engine-on-august-17/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/vampire-survivors-swit...

james-skemp 3y ago
And supposedly new features are written in JavaScript and then ported over to Unity. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVdR8mJrds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVdR8mJrds

tslocum 3y ago

This is a list of released, open source games created in Go using the Ebitengine game engine: https://github.com/sedyh/awesome-ebitengine#games https://github.com/sedyh/awesome-ebitengine#games

dleslie 3y ago

SteamDB is great for this sort of thing: GZDoom: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GZDoom/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GZDoom/ Godot: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/ Love: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Love2D/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Love2D/ FNA: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/FNA/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/FNA/ OGRE: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/OGRE/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/OGRE/ Torque: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Torque/ https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Torque/

klaussilveira 3y ago
This is great. All their detection logic is open source: https://github.com/SteamDatabase/FileDetectionRuleSets https://github.com/SteamDatabase/FileDetectionRuleSets
Waterluvian 3y ago
Huh. They’re sorted by rating. And like 7 of the top 10 Godot games are about cats.
samspenc 3y ago
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/ 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.
- entropicdrifter 3y ago
  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.

wincy 3y ago

FreeCiv uses its own FOSS engine[0], can keep you occupied for days. [0] http://freeciv.org/ http://freeciv.org/

reactordev 3y ago

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).

przemub 3y ago

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

klaussilveira 3y ago

Oh, I forgot a few major ones: https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge was used in No Man's Sky, Hades and Starfield. https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics is the physics engine in Horizon Forbidden West.