Game Engine Guides

The following is the master list of “Closer Look at” series done by GameFromScratch.com. Each is a combination of a guided tour, review and getting started tutorial, designed to give you a quick but thorough introduction to each game engine. The following list is chronological order in which the guide was written. If there is an engine you would like to see get the "Closer Look at" treatment, please contact me with details!

GameMaker Studio 2

GameMaker Studio 2 is a major update of the venerable GameMaker 2D game engine. Text Version | Video Version
GDevelop

GDevelop is a full 2D game engine for making native and HTML5 2D games, that is free and open source. Text Version | Video Version
S2Engine HD

S2Engine is a low cost 3D Windows only game engine capable of some stunningly pretty results. Text Version | Video Version
ClickTeam Fusion

ClickTeam Fusion is a storied 2D game engine complete with all of the tools you may need. ClickTeam requires no programming experience. Text Version | Video Version
Stingray Engine

Stingray is a 3D engine from Autodesk, the makers of Maya and 3DS Max. It was based on the BitSquid engine, is written in C++ but coded using Lua and Flow. Text Version | Video Version
QICI Game Engine

QICI is a full HTML5 game engine and editor built over top of the sublime Phaser framework. It's is both free and open source. Text Version | Video Version
Atomic Game Engine

Currently in early access at a reduced price for the Pro version, Atomic Game Engine is freely available and built over the Urho C++ based game engine, adding a very polished editor and JavaScript and Typescript bindings. Text Version | Video Version
Duality Engine

An open source C# based 2D game engine with a surprisingly capable and well polished Editor and entity component system. Text Version | Video Version
Otter 2D Engine

An open source C# engine built over top of the SFML framework. Otter2D provides most of the game engine functionality you would expect in an easy to use well documented format. Text Version | Video Version
Wave Engine

A C# based 2D/3D cross platform game engine with tooling that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. WaveEngine is free to use but requires displaying a splash screen. Text Version | Video Version
SFML

While technically not a game engine, SFML provides a great deal of the functionality you need to make a 2D game using C++ including graphics, windowing, networking, input and audio libraries. It is free and open source. Text Version | Video Version
jMonkeyEngine

A Java based cross platform 3D game engine capable of targeting Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and soon iOS. Contains a full SDK and toolset for creating 3D games. Text Version | Video Version
Paradox Game Engine

A C#/Windows/Visual Studio based 2D/3D game engine capable of targeting Windows, iOS, Android and soon PS4, Mac and Linux. Uses a component based design and icluded Paradox Studio for asset management Text Version | Video Version
Stencyl

Stencyl is Text Version | Video Version a cross platform 2D game engine with a visual scripting language available with the option to program using the Haxe programming language. Stencyl can target web, desktop, iOS and Android.
AppGameKit 2

A cross platform mobile friendly 2D/3D game engine programmed using BASIC or C++. Runs on Mac and Windows and capable of targeting Mac, Windows, Android, iOS and Blackberry. Text Version | Video Version
LibGDX

A cross platform, open source Java based 2D/3D game framework. Extensive tutorial series exists here on GameFromScratch.com. Text Version | Video Version
BabylonJS

A 2D code focused open source HTML5 game engine. Text Version | Video Version
PlayCanvas

A 2D/3D HTML5 game engine with a complete 3D world editor. Text Version | Video Version Partially open source with commercial licenses for cloud based services.
Godot Engine

A C++ based open source 2D/3D game engine supporting most desktop and mobile platforms while running on Windows, OS/X and Linux. Text Version | Video Version
Urho3D

Urho3D is a lightweight, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine implemented in C++ and released under the MIT license. Text Version
Unreal Engine 4

One of the largest install base 3D game engines available, and the most used by AAA studios on this list. Please note this guide is in two parts, look for the link to the next page at the bottom. Also note, there is no longer a monthly fee.Text Version
Project Anarchy

Another AAA game engine on the list. Project Anarchy is a collection of AAA game technologies from Havok, released free for use on mobile platforms.Text Version
Turbulenz

An HTML5 game engine geared towards high performance 3D games. Developers may have stopped development.Text Version
AWE6

AWE6 is a Haxe based Inversion of Control based game engine, used to create some shipping game. What's IOC? Read more to find out!Text Version
Loom Engine

Loom is a mobile focused cross platform 2D game engine. Please note that the logo is not theirs, I couldn't find one. This is a mutli-part guide, the link to next part is at the bottom.Text Version
Gameplay3D

Cross platform C++ open source, code centric 3D game engine, originally created by RIM. Text Version