Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A 2D game engine in under 1000 lines of C
A top-down 2d game engine, written from scratch in under 1000 lines of C. Development of the game based on this engine is streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ryanpcmcquen - ryanpcmcquen/basque
A minimal 2D game engine implemented in under 1000 lines of C code, launched in 2020. It provides core functionality for developers building simple 2D games who prefer lightweight, readable code over feature-heavy… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A 2D game engine in under 1000 lines of C launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 3
Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4IS
2012 · ektomarch.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Modd.io is a collaborative game editor that runs in browser. It's kind of like Figma for game dev. We made this engine low-code and multiplayer-first, so developeres can quickly prototype casual multiplayer games. I hope some of you guys will find this useful. Would love to hear feedback also. Thank you. Engine Demo: https://www.modd.io
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
I open sourced my HTML5 multiplayer 3D voxel browser game engine.
2023 · kevzettler.com · its alternatives →
- 7UL
In the wake of all the Unity nonsense, just wanted to toss the Raverie engine into this mix :) We’re building off a previous engine that we worked on for DigiPen Institute of Technology called the Zero Engine with a similar component based design architecture to Unity. Our engine had a unique feature called Spaces: separate worlds/levels that you can instantiate and run at the same time, which became super useful for creating UI overlays using only game objects, running multiple simulations, etc. The lighting and rendering engine is scriptable, and the default deferred rendering…
2023 · raverie-us.github.io · its alternatives →
- 8
Hello HN, Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components). It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL. Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect. Audio, graphics, scripting,…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Crown Engine. Contribute to dbartolini/crown development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
I created a small 2D game engine named Tiny. The engine was created using Kotlin Multiplatform and can run on a JVM and JS. Funny things: Games can be created using the programming language Lua. Tiny is designed to help you create and test your ideas quickly and effectively. Not only can you run your games on your desktop computer, but you can also export them for the web, making it easy to share your creations with others. You can create games easily with the hot reload, small API and Lua, which is very easy to learn. If you want to test a game idea, to try to create your first game or just…
2023 · minigdx.github.io · its alternatives →
- 11
3D C++ Game Engine - yet another open source game engine - nem0/LumixEngine
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
A 3D game rendered entirely in CSS/HTML. Relying as much as possible on traditional html/css features instead of modern graphic APIs. Supports lighting, shadows, culling, etc. Can you escape the dungeon?
2020 · pantel.is · its alternatives →
- 14H0
Hello, Hacker News! My name is Lillian (see: http://about.lillian.link/), and I just released version 0.2 of my MIT-licensed game engine, Hypatia(http://lillian-lemmer.github.io/hypatia/). Hypatia is a game engine for single player 2D action adventure games. You can use it to make a game like Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. Hypatia is aimed at non-programmers and programmers alike. I'm seeking any sort of feedback. Hypatia supports FreeBSD first, but has great support for just about any platform…
2015 · its alternatives →
- 15
toy is a thin and modular c++ game engine that also runs on the web.
2018 · hugoam.github.io · its alternatives →
- 16MM
Fun free no-download game you
2021 · vnav.io · its alternatives →
- 17CP
Hi HN! 2d spritesheets for game development are often distributed as a PNG image, sometimes with a separate JSON or XML metadata document describing the layout, including any animation sequences within the sheet. Sometimes there is no metadata document and you have to work it out and manually write custom code to chop up the spritesheet and reference the sprites you want. I think it would be good if it became standard practice to distribute spritesheet PNGs with the metadata inline inside a PNG "chunk" so the whole thing is self-contained. That way artists can just distribute one file, and…
2019 · mccormick.cx · its alternatives →
- 18
GitHub repo: https://github.com/ArcadeMakerSources/ArcadeMaker (first of all, i want to say that I made this project for fun and challenge. I always wanted to create my own language. This has no business goal or something.) So the project is a 2D game engine (MonoGame backend) inspired by GameMaker 8. It includes its own IDE (built with WinForms) and an interpreted programming language that I wrote myself. The language—definitely the biggest challenge in the project—is a simple dynamically typed language. When I started, I had zero knowledge of how to build something like…
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
A cross platform 2D game engine written in C++ for beginners - sdslabs/Rubeus
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20SF
Hi HN! I’ve been building a 2D game using a custom engine I wrote from scratch – no Unity, no frameworks. It’s fully self-funded and will be released commercially on Steam. Engine source code (MIT): http://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo I’d love feedback on the gameplay, visuals, performance, or anything else. Thanks!
2025 · bereprobate.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Render 3D models (OBJ, glTF, GLB, STL, .vox) as ASCII art — in the browser, in React or Vue, or straight in your terminal. A three.js-style API with no WebGL and no canvas: just text in a single <pre>.
Jun 2026 · glyphcss.com · its alternatives →
- 22
A minimalist three-dimensional coding environment. Control 8x8x8 dots with a single JavaScript function.
2021 · doersino.github.io · its alternatives →
- 23
"Game" is a stretch, but I put together this repo containing a pure Rust app which uses SDL2 and compiles to WASM (and can be run in a browser). Older resources were a bit out of date and a bit too verbose for my purposes, so here's a minimal working example.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24AT
2024 · s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- I wrote my own RTS game engine in C alternatives
- My platforming game written in C 89 alternatives
- I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++ alternatives
- I spent two years working on an HTML5 game. I finally released it alternatives
- I'm open-sourcing my game engine alternatives
- I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →