Leadwerks Game Engine
Leadwerks is a semi easy-to-use and very powerful game engine written in OpenGL 4 with a deferred renderer. The engine is crossplatform between Windows & Linux, frequently updated, and has a very friendly and active community. With Leadwerks, you can create any game you want, be it an FPS game, 3rd person shooter, a puzzle game, or something super wacky, you can make it in the Leadwerks engine.
Some Of The Great Features
The deferred renderer is the pride and joy in this engine, giving you the ability to easily add dynamic lights and/or static lights with realistic shadows instantly, no lightmap baking needed. CSG level editing (like Source Engine’s Hammer editor) is fun and fast in the Leadwerks editor, allowing you to map out and create a level to test out pretty quickly. The engine is built upon OpenGL 4, making the engine crossplatform between Windows and Linux. A Mac version is currently in the works and should be out sometime in the near future.
– Real player with 1535.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Animation & Modeling Education Games.
If you read this before the end of the 2nd December 2014, and you are wanting to be be able to write a 3D game, get this now. Its incredible value at 50% off. If you have and use visual studio and write code in C++, and want to use it to write a game, splash out and get the Standard version too. I bought mine in a previous sale, with -25% off, and have invested many hours in using this latest version during the beta testing of 3.3.
There are lots of video tutorials on you-tube, which are really useful for a beginner to understand how to start to use Leadwerks. The Forum http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/ is a great community resource, which is always worth a visit when your stuck, answers to many of your questions can be found by searching in here. If its not already answered you can ask the community, and there are some really great people who have been using Leadwerks for years, including Josh (Leadwerks CEO) who respond with knowlegeable answers.
– Real player with 979.8 hrs in game
CopperCube 5 Game Engine
Lets be clear, Coppercube is intended to be simple and easy to use. This is a software for non programers, or those like me who prefer to focus on art and design, rather than typing tons of code. For this Coppercube is the best out there. Porting between PC, MacOS, WebGl, Android, and flash is near seamless. Most of the time its as simple as clicking the publish to option. There are tons of behaviors and actions to mix and match to do most things you will need, and their is a Javascript API if you want even more control. I’ve used quite a few game engines over the years (Multimedia Fusion, Gamemaker, 3DRad, Jamagic, Gamesalad) and none were as easy and fast to develop 3D applications than Coppercube.
– Real player with 3991.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Animation & Modeling Education Games.
I have been playing around with CopperCube the past couple of weeks and I have fallen in love. 1 being that it is easy to get something simple up and running but also the option and simplistic coding. I start messing with the action and coding behaviors and find it to be quite easy when following their tutorial (but I am coding savvy). Graphic wise it isn’t Unity but I am not out to make a AAA game either.
I am running this on my Surface 3 so anyone who comes across my review I would say it runs smoothly on it and isn’t a resource hog which is a huge plus to me.
– Real player with 357.7 hrs in game
AppGameKit Studio
9 Out Of 10 Stars!
Hi,
Been using original “AppGameKit 2” (now called “Classic”) for a long time with great results.
I purchased “AppGameKit Studio” today.
First impressions are excellent.
I really love the new IDE and scene editor.
Definitely recommend this game creation software!
It’s missing some things that I hope are implemented soon:
(1) [DONE]HTML5/WebGL export with persistent data saving.
(2) “Steam Workshop” support.
(3) “Vulkan” rendering support for the other platforms.
Great game engine!
– Real player with 1454.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Animation & Modeling Education Games.
AppGameKit Studio is the successor to the original AppGameKit and features several new improvements. However, if you are happy with the original AGK, there’s no urgent reason to upgrade - yet.
As for the software itself, although it was probably far from what the developers were hoping for, I wrote a visual novel with it called ‘Shark Dating Simulator’, available on Steam, which had a major boost when JackSepticEye reviewed it and sales were somewhat higher than I ever expected. As I was raised on the BASIC of old computers, AGK was not difficult to get into at all. AGK apps, for me on PC, run fast and smoothly and there are no watermarks or royalties to pay on your work - everything you make is yours. I would never have been able to make my game without AGK.
– Real player with 672.6 hrs in game
AppGameKit Classic: Easy Game Development
A little background:
I’m a professional developer schooled in C### and Java. I am however not schooled to create games, but I know how the mechanics work. 3D game development is more of a hobby/side-project. Please read my review as such, if you’re completely new to programming, my feeling about this product can greatly differ from your perspective. Most of my pros and cons are subjective. But true in my opinion. Also: I use this product only for 3D development, I have no interest in the 2D side.
– Real player with 1305.3 hrs in game
I’ve changed my review. I thought about deleting it and posting a whole new review, but then I decided to keep it so TGC’s intentions to make AGK functional on Linux would be documented in the comments. If you would like to see the old review, so you’ll have some context if you read the comments, click here .
Okay, I’ve got better things to do with my time now that AGK on Linux has notably improved, and 2 lengthy reviews is 2 too many, so let’s get down to brass tacks.
– Real player with 1279.9 hrs in game
CUR3D Steam Edition
While the usual tools fail, CUR3D can repair and convert 3D files (not made for printing).
Recommended! ( if you know why you need this software )
– Real player with 22.0 hrs in game
After spending a bunch of hours mucking around in Blender and Zbrush trying to get a video game mesh into a printable state, this just worked.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Axis Game Factory’s AGFPRO v3
Game factory does not make games. It is a level / world design tool. A really good level / world design tool for Unity based games. You see everything in real time. You can play test your levels, run around and stuff, but its not a stand alone game game engine, just a level / world design tool. However, calling yourself Game Factory was slightly misleading, but whatever. On the forum, the developers hint at wanting to one day make it a stand alone game engine, but I’m not sure if its a hint or misleading. Since they call it Game Factory, I have to lean toward the potential of misleading here.
– Real player with 238.5 hrs in game
(tl;dr: Summary at bottom. Also pay attention to review dates….especially the positive ones….)
Update Jan 2019: Seems AGFPRO and Geovox have finally had the option to purchase them on Steam removed for Australians it seems.
Everyone else has my pity.
UPDATE: Some AGF content is game breakingly broken at the moment. Dev ZekeThe Defender aka Alex has posted a fix that requires rolling back AGF to older versions.
Sadly he has also quit AGF. So could be a while before a proper fix is provided. Until then consider AGF broken and I seriously recommend not buying it or it’s DLC’s until the matter is resolved.
– Real player with 135.1 hrs in game
001 Game Creator
Especially for the money, I don’t think you’ll find a program more fun to use when putting together your games. I haven’t found a more flexible engine (Short of maybe Unity, which still requires extra licensing) to quickly piece together scenes and basic mechanics to sketch out game ideas without diving into a million menus. They don’t even have to be simple prototypes, as I am also able to implement complex mechanics in no time at all using easy drag and drop scripting. I have found that my only limitation so far has been my own terrible math skill.
– Real player with 4553.1 hrs in game
I’ve used 001 now for almost 15 years. I’m currently working for SoftWeir Inc. and have contributed to 001 in many ways. That being said, I originally purchased 001 years ago through their website as any other customer, and not just given a free copy as a team member. I’m not being paid to write this review.
001 is a very capable engine designed to bring your ideas to life, as quickly as possible. You can import assets, just plop them into a map or interface, tweak some triggers then start building a game. If you are familiar with the engine, and have the assets ready, you can quite literally prototype ideas in under an hour (Of course depending on how many existing systems and assets you can leverage, and what gameplay you are looking for)
– Real player with 1955.3 hrs in game
GameGuru
Gameguru is a rough-around-the edges, cheap, underpowered game engine. It is a spiritual successor to TGC’s previos successful endeavor: FPS Creator. FPS creator was a dream come true for wanna-be mappers and newbie game designers wanting to create their own simple little first person experiences. It worked well enough for what it was, had a super active community, and lots of mods, an easy-to-learn custom scripting language, and many successful games were made with it.
FPS Creator reloaded promised to be the upgrade everyone wanted from FPS Creator. It was gonna feature all next gen graphical features, a bigger map editor, and in general more freedom and ability. This was proposed on kickstarter where it didn’t meet it’s exorbitant asking donation, so it later was rebranded and came out as GameGuru.
– Real player with 650.3 hrs in game
Yeah, okay, GameGuru doesn’t have the best graphics around, but they have a specific look to it, so there’s that. Making the graphics look as good as UE4 and Unity however, is practically impossible. But that’s not my point, my point is GameGuru’s graphics are good enough for making games for the hecc of it.
The engine is editable to certain extents, but not really enough for hardcore coders and developers. Again, this is an engine made more for the fun of it. Making some nice $$$ is possible, but not too easy.
– Real player with 387.7 hrs in game
Pixel Game Maker MV
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m now ready to weigh in my thoughts on Pixel Game Maker MV. I’ve been using this software since early access back in 2018.
TL;DR:
Pixel Game Maker MV is a great game development engine for those that are not programmers, and want to be able to create either side scrolling or top down action games. It’s got enough for a single person development operation to chew on here to create the game you want to create in the way you want it created; bearing in mind that you operate within the program’s limits. If programming/scripting is outside your reach (or if it’s something you can do), this is a great engine that has the potential to be amazing as long as the developers continue with updates & performance improvements. There are assets and DLC that is available at the time of writing for you to get a jump on a concept quickly, but there are no asset standards (outside of keeping things divisible by 2) to conform with.
– Real player with 2587.5 hrs in game
I’ll begin this review with I’m 36, not 16. I have no illusions about making a game and distributing it for gain. This is a hobby for me and that is the perspective I write this review from. I have a day job. I moonlight as a hobby pixel artist, and that drives me to dev software to have fun with, and bring it to life.
I began with RPG Maker MV as my first dip into game dev software. I do not have a desire to learn to code so that software was more interesting to me compared to more advanced engines. After years in RMMV I felt the want for more control from the ground up, and not be boxed in by hard limitations from the software, and the need for plugins to break through those hard limitations. Pixel Game Maker MV grants me that feeling. I did not feel like the learning curve to get going on a project was difficult, even without a large database of video tutorial content on YouTube at the time.
– Real player with 1866.7 hrs in game