Best Game Engines in the UK

What makes GDevelop unique and so easy to use is the event system. Events are a powerful way to express the logic of your game, without having to learn a programming language. Unleash your creativity with GDevelop and create all kinds of games: platformers, shoot’em up, strategy, 8-bit, hyper-casual games... the sky is the limit. Express your ideas, big and small: you can prototype new features on your games in minutes, and refine them without limits. Making games has never been so easy and fast, with the visual editors provided by GDevelop. Use ready made objects from the asset store or create your own from scratch. Choose sprites, particle emitters, texts, videos and many others to build the scenes of your game. Add effects to the layers and objects of your scene. These effects allow to quickly changes the atmosphere and rendering of your game in one click.

As you probably know by now, LÖVE is a framework for making 2D games in the Lua programming language. LÖVE is totally free, and can be used in anything from friendly open-source hobby projects, to evil, closed-source commercial ones. To make a minimal game, create a folder anywhere, and open up your favorite text editor. Sublime Text is a pretty good one for all operating systems, and it has Lua support built in. Create a new file in the folder you just created, and name it main.lua. Put the following code in the file, and save it.

Nakama is an open source game server framework developed by Heroic Labs, designed to facilitate the creation of real-time, multiplayer, and social games across various platforms, including Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, and more. It provides a comprehensive suite of features such as real-time multiplayer capabilities, customizable matchmaking algorithms, leaderboards, in-game chat, and support for in-game currencies. Developers can extend Nakama's functionality using server-side logic written in Go, TypeScript, or Lua, allowing for authoritative game mechanics and enhanced control over game state. The platform also offers open-source client libraries tailored for different game engines and languages, ensuring seamless integration and flexibility in game development. Nakama is your dedicated server, not another multi-tenant SaaS. Add custom features and secure authoritative gameplay logic directly to your game server.

SceneKit is a high-level 3D graphics framework from Apple that enables developers to create immersive 3D experiences for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications. Built atop Metal and OpenGL, SceneKit provides a descriptive API for importing, manipulating, and rendering 3D assets. Developers can construct complex scenes using nodes (SCNNode), each representing elements like geometry, lights, cameras, or other attributes. The framework supports a range of features, including a physics engine (SCNPhysicsBody) for realistic simulations, particle systems for effects like fire or rain, and integration with ARKit to add 3D content to augmented reality experiences. SceneKit also offers tools for organizing scenes, such as the scene graph, which allows for the hierarchical structuring of nodes. Additionally, developers can utilize the SceneKit Scene Editor within Xcode to assemble assets into scenes, streamlining the development process.

Stencyl isn't your average game creation software; it's a gorgeous, intuitive toolset that accelerates your workflow and then gets out of the way. We take care of the essentials, so you can focus on what's important - making your game yours. The best Stencyl games have reached top slots in the App Store and Google Play while being featured under the "Best New Game" section under their respective stores. Our best web games have been sponsored by major publishers such as ArmorGames, Kongregate and Newgrounds. Our drag-and-drop gameplay designer pays homage to the successful MIT Scratch project. We extend Scratch's simple block-snapping interface with new functionality and hundreds of ready-to-use block, Power users can create and share their own blocks, extend the engine through code, import libraries and write their own custom classes that interact seamlessly with block-based Behaviors.

SpriteKit is Apple's 2D game development framework that provides a graphics rendering and animation infrastructure for animating textured images, or sprites. It leverages Metal to achieve high-performance rendering and integrates seamlessly with other Apple frameworks like ARKit and SceneKit, allowing for the creation of immersive augmented reality experiences. Developers can utilize SpriteKit's scene editor within Xcode to design and preview game levels, characters, and animations, streamlining the development process. The framework also supports physics simulations, particle systems, and various special effects, enabling the creation of dynamic and interactive game environments. With its intuitive API and robust toolset, SpriteKit simplifies the development of engaging 2D games and applications across Apple's platforms.