Top 10 Game Development Frameworks

The mobile gaming and indie game development industry is continuously on the rise, with more people turning to engaging gaming apps for mobile and desktop than ever before. Moreover, with new advances in game engines and PC hardware/software, we’re seeing the entire game development lifecycle become more and more approachable for independent developers and startups.

This is why we’ve brought you our list of the Top 10 Game Development Frameworks. But first, let’s learn more about Game Development Frameworks and why you should use them.

What is Game Development Framework and Why You Should Consider Using it

In simple terms, Game Development frameworks provide you with libraries designed to help you with the game development process. With Game Development frameworks, you receive a collection of predesigned code, functions, and scripts that you can implement directly into your application.

With game development frameworks, you can shorten development time using premade templates for game dev purposes. Using a game development framework quickens the process of setting up different game elements such as building UIs, enabling functions, setting up game physics and input handling, and more. Beginner game developers will have a much better experience with the drag-and-drop game development environment the framework provides.

Additionally, with cross platform and mobile game development framework, you can ensure that your game works smoothly on multiple platforms. A fair number of game development frameworks are designed with web game development and mobile game development in mind, and we’ve made sure to include the best ones on our list.
So, if you want to start creating immersive games with ease, we highly suggest you check out our following list of the Best Game development frameworks:

Top 10 Game Development Frameworks for Mobile and Desktop Game Devs

Unity was Initially released in 2005 and expanded in 2018 to over 25 platforms. It prides itself being a cross-platform game engine supported on Android, iOS and Linux. You can develop in a language of your choice consisting of C#, Boo or JS. It allows you to build game styles of 2D,3D, virtual reality and augmented reality. It’s flexible and well documented and has an excellent support service offering many tutorials and guides. Depending on your requirements, there is a free version, plus and a pro version with a monthly subscription fee.

libGDX is one of the most popular game development framework available currently. The framework is a free, open-source, cross-platform framework and is constantly updated by its dedicated community of developers. Licensed under Apache 2 you can build 2D or 3D games using Java as well as using some C++ and C components. It allows you to create games using the same code base for Linux, macOS, Windows, HTML5, Android, iOS and Blackberry. Therefore as a developer, you can write, test and debug your application. There is ever-growing community support with many tutorials provided by them and third parties.

Phaser is an open-source framework built for Canvas and WebGL browser games. It’s a 2D game framework allowing HTML5 games for desktop and mobile. To create games using Phaser, you must use an internet browser which supports canvas HTML tag. Games built from Phaser are developed in JavaScript or TypeScript. It’s been given a rating of over 26,000 stars on GitHub and has large community support.

An open-sourced and free cross-platform game development framework operating under the MIT license, GODOT allows for the construction of 2D and 3D games. Godot is one of the most popular game frameworks for creating games made with C# or C++ for mobile, PC and web platforms. Similarly, it also has its own language if you choose to use GDScript. Currently, the platforms it supports are HTML5, iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry 10 and many others. Alongside the code, GODOT features an animation system which has a range of original features.

UnrealEngine is a one of the most popular and feature heavy game frameworks available in the game development space. Unreal contains pre-built modular systems and customisable plug-ins which means the framework requires no additional plug-ins. Its code is written in C++ and runs on over ten platforms. Similarly, it allows you to create virtual and augmented reality-style games. Many developers choose to use this world wide for its support for Vulkan and Metal rendering API’s.

BabylonJS is a JavaScript based open-sourced game development framework available on GitHub operating under the Apache License 2.0. BabylonJS allows all the development to occur in the editor. It allows for 3D games to be created in a web browser supporting HTML5. It is a leading framework for JavaScript built games and used by many across the world.

PixiJS is a cross-platform game development framework supported by HTML5 used to create 2D games. The JavaScript and Pixi based JS game engine is renowned for its fast speed on any device. It’s popular due to its free and open-source Development with an ever-expanding large yet supportive community. PixiJS is supported on multiple platforms and won an award in 2014 for Most Innovative Front end JavaScript project.

olar2D functions as a cross-platform framework to create games for mobiles and desktops. It’s free to use and runs off the open-sourced Lua language on top of C++. Corona’s performance is optimised for every level allowing for extreme efficiency. As soon as you update your code and save you will see changes in their instant update simulator.

Another open-source framework, Panda3D is free to use and allow games to be built across many platforms under the BSD license. It’s been developed by Disney Interactive The programming language Panda3D incorporates Python and allows rapid prototyping. Other than 3D rendering it has many different tools such as debugging, keyboard and mouse support, 3D Audio, performance analysis and many more.

Developed by YoYo Games, GameMaker is a desktop and mobile games development framework for building 2D games. It’s written in C++ and uses drag and drop a visual scripting tool. It’s available in English, Spanish, German and French. It also allows the game to be exported directly onto the platform.

Conclusion:

And that finishes our list of the Top Game Development Frameworks for mobile and desktop game development. We hope that you are able to find a perfect pick for your future game development needs using our guide. Game development is expected to only grow as a career option with the huge boom of the gaming industry and we expect these frameworks and more to get even better over time. So we highly recommend you checkback with our list in the future as well.
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