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Top 23 Gamedev Open-Source Projects
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I usually recommend the inexperienced do at least 1 project in godot:
https://godotengine.org/
Then port it to UE if they are interested in skill reuse for future projects:
https://www.unrealengine.com/
SDL has a lot of issues, and falls into "only if you must" category. Still better than .NET or Java in many ways, as spacial audio is easy in the mixer. =3
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AppSignal
AppSignal knows why the f*#k it crashed. Stop vibe-debugging. Every exception, every backtrace, grouped so you see patterns, not noise.
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Project mention: Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-09-03
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Project mention: Bevy - a refreshingly simple data-driven game engine built in Rust | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-10-01
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phaser
Phaser is a fun, free and fast 2D game framework for making HTML5 games for desktop and mobile web browsers, supporting Canvas and WebGL rendering.
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Project mention: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-07-23
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on Firefox and Windows, it's a disaster
in addition to what other comments pointed out, on the demo ( https://www.egui.rs/#demo ) if you have a sidebar open, there is an offset of approximately the sidebar's width (though not exactly) between the system's mouse pointer position and the web app
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Project mention: MonoGame: A .NET framework for making cross-platform games | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-07
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WaveFunctionCollapse
Bitmap & tilemap generation from a single example with the help of ideas from quantum mechanics
Project mention: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-08-01No I just meant WFC as an algorithm for solving problems.
https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
I guess I've been pronouncing it wrong though.
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3d-game-shaders-for-beginners
🎮 A step-by-step guide to implementing SSAO, depth of field, lighting, normal mapping, and more for your 3D game.
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Cocos2d
Cocos2d-x is a suite of open-source, cross-platform, game-development tools utilized by millions of developers across the globe. Its core has evolved to serve as the foundation for Cocos Creator 1.x & 2.x.
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Project mention: Show HN: Pyxel – A Python retro game engine with built-in art and sound editors | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-10-01
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Project mention: Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization? | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-06-16
Your comparison is like comparing The Eagles to some little local rock band!
Rather than two competitive products I think these are both market dominant products that reveal the engineering culture, values and impact of the two organizations.
I can say that when I first started with React I thought it sucked and looked at Vue and Svelte and similar things. My take on all of them was that they made the internal frameworks I was using to build very complex RIAs in the 2005-2010 time frame look like something that fell off a UFO.
I first thought Vue reflected the way I thought about conventional "webby" applications particularly in terms of treating lists as a first-class object. I eventually learned with React how to draw absolutely anything, even whole 3-d worlds!
https://aframe.io/
I guess what I'll say about Svelte is "if you make such a radical change in your framework did you really believe in it?" Early on I stuck to controlled forms in React because uncontrolled forms seemed structurally unstable (add one too many features and it all breaks) and then I discovered
https://react-hook-form.com/
which is easy and very high performing.
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bgfx
Cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library.
Project mention: Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-18 -
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Project mention: Show HN: Shirei, cross-platform GUI framework in native Go | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-07-12
Is Tracy complicated enough? Because it's imgui.
https://github.com/wolfpld/tracy
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unity-mcp
Unity MCP acts as a bridge between AI assistants and your Unity Editor. Give your LLM tools to manage assets, control scenes, edit scripts, and automate tasks within Unity.
Project mention: Unity MCP: Bridging AI Assistants with Unity for Automated Game Development | dev.to | 2026-07-05The protocol facilitates communication between various MCP clients (e.g., Claude Desktop & Code, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI) and the Unity Editor. Installation is achieved via Unity's Package Manager, by adding the GitHub URL https://github.com/CoplayDev/unity-mcp.git?path=/MCPForUnity#main or through OpenUPM. The system requires Unity 2021.3 LTS or newer and Python 3.10+ (managed via uv).
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Project mention: MonoGame: A .NET framework for making cross-platform games | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-07
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Project mention: Pumpkin: Building a Minecraft server in Rust, First release after 2 years | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-09-06
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Project mention: Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-16
Yeah, I've been using Flutter since December last year and I'm really amazed how good the developer experience is. I kinda regret not picking it up sooner but from what I understand now's a great time too with the roadmap they've planned for this year (videos on YouTube explaining Flutter concepts and decoupling Material and Cupertino).
You can even make 2D games with Flutter with the help of Flame[0] but be wary that pixel art style games are a bit of a hassle due to some bugs in Flutter itself. Otherwise Flutter is a joy to use for its intended purpose, cross-platform apps.
[0] https://flame-engine.org/
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NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Gamedev discussion
Gamedev related posts
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Redot Engine – Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine
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I built a small kanban board that my coding agents update with curl
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Bevy - a refreshingly simple data-driven game engine built in Rust
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Your GDScript arrays are slower than you think — I built a CLI that detects the pitfalls and benchmarks them
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Tickwise in Unity
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Animation in Bevy: The Big Picture
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Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++
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www.saashub.com | 7 Oct 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Gamedev projects? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Godot | 118,116 |
| 2 | imgui | 76,476 |
| 3 | bevy | 48,538 |
| 4 | phaser | 40,399 |
| 5 | raylib | 34,912 |
| 6 | egui | 30,823 |
| 7 | GDevelop | 27,037 |
| 8 | libGDX | 25,423 |
| 9 | WaveFunctionCollapse | 25,374 |
| 10 | 3d-game-shaders-for-beginners | 19,921 |
| 11 | Cocos2d | 19,132 |
| 12 | pyxel | 18,304 |
| 13 | A-Frame | 17,645 |
| 14 | bgfx | 17,536 |
| 15 | magictools | 17,401 |
| 16 | engine | 16,958 |
| 17 | tracy | 16,866 |
| 18 | unity-mcp | 14,673 |
| 19 | MonoGame | 14,484 |
| 20 | Ebiten | 13,533 |
| 21 | entt | 13,158 |
| 22 | Pumpkin | 11,812 |
| 23 | flame | 10,779 |
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AppSignal knows why the f*#k it crashed.
Stop vibe-debugging. Every exception, every backtrace, grouped so you see patterns, not noise.
www.appsignal.com