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Top 23 Gamedev Open-Source Projects
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Wow, you weren't kidding, I found these before I got bored (they all seem to be LLM-authored from a quick skim):
- https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/115280 Implement C# .NET Integration via Headless Glue Bypass (Build 7ae8ec974) by Eliene-byte
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Project mention: strace-ui, Bonsai_term, and the TUI renaissance | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-06-02
My take is that GUI frameworks/APIs have abandoned power users.
Yes, there are thing like https://github.com/ocornut/imgui, and some (especially open source) applications try and muddle a long with Qt or GTK, but many (most?) serious professional or power user applications have built their own GUI frameworks or at least custom controls to deal with this.
Whatever route you take, as a dev it's painful, especially for someone who remembers adding a couple of libraries to a Delphi project back in the Office 2000s era and getting full docking, configurable toolbars, etc. with little to no work.
So the easy fallback (especially with the recent proliferation of libraries) is TUI and CLI applications with the layout/docking and tabs provided by the terminal emulator itself or one of tmux/zellij/etc.
I've been thinking on and off for a few years now about the idea of a "graphical terminal", sitting somewhere between a GUI toolkit and a terminal emulator and a full blown OS for building inter-composable apps and tools and components that could replace TUI based workflows/apps/layouts. I have a vision of every "pro" app just being a different curation and configuration of underlying components rather than actually separate software.
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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.
Here is what I wanted to find - simple portal where I could play simpler games built with HTML and Javascript and nothing else. Sure, building them with engines like Phaser is one thing, but creating a complete game with Unity and then packing it together to play a game that I can't tinker with is no fun!
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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: Bitmap and tilemap generation from a single example | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-30 -
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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: Modern Front end Complexity: essential or accidental? | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-21
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Project mention: Getting Started with 2D Games Using Pyxel (Part 1): Introduction | dev.to | 2026-01-05
Pyxel is a game engine that makes it easy to handle things like character rendering, movement, and collision detection. It is especially recommended for those who love retro-style games.
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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: NASA Built Artemis II's Fault-Tolerant Computer | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-10
>what is my point? well, i think a web stack ran under an RTOS (and sized appropriately) might be a much more pleasurable experience. Get rid of all those lags, and intermittent hangs and calls for more GB of memory.
... it's not the OS that's source of majority of lag
Click around in this demo https://tracy.nereid.pl/
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Project mention: Show HN: Spark, An advanced 3D Gaussian Splatting renderer for Three.js | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-06-11
BabylonJS and the OP's own Aframe [1] seem to have similar licenses, similar number of Github stars and forks, although Aframe seems newer and more game / VR focused.
How do Babylon, Aframe, Three.js, and PlayCanvas [2] compare from those that have used them?
IIUC, PlayCanvas is the most mature, featureful, and performant, but it's commercial. Babylon is the featureful 3D engine, whereas Three.js is fairly raw. Though it has some nice stuff for animation, textures, etc., you're really building your own kit.
Any good experiences (or bad) with any of these?
[1] https://github.com/aframevr/aframe
[2] https://playcanvas.com/
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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: 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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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.
Community projects, like those from CoplayDev and CoderGamester, focus on speed and flexibility. They expose many parts of the Unity editor as MCP tools, which makes them great for experimentation and fast iteration.
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Pixelorama
Unleash your creativity with Pixelorama, a powerful and accessible open-source pixel art multitool. Whether you want to create sprites, tiles, animations, or just express yourself in the language of pixel art, this software will realize your pixel-perfect dreams with a vast toolbox of features. Available on Windows, Linux, macOS and the Web!
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).
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 7 Jun 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Gamedev projects? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Godot | 112,150 |
| 2 | imgui | 73,701 |
| 3 | bevy | 46,440 |
| 4 | phaser | 39,725 |
| 5 | raylib | 33,258 |
| 6 | egui | 29,309 |
| 7 | libGDX | 25,131 |
| 8 | WaveFunctionCollapse | 25,117 |
| 9 | GDevelop | 23,492 |
| 10 | 3d-game-shaders-for-beginners | 19,497 |
| 11 | Cocos2d | 18,998 |
| 12 | A-Frame | 17,548 |
| 13 | pyxel | 17,517 |
| 14 | bgfx | 17,120 |
| 15 | magictools | 16,767 |
| 16 | tracy | 16,101 |
| 17 | engine | 15,945 |
| 18 | MonoGame | 13,976 |
| 19 | Ebiten | 13,208 |
| 20 | entt | 12,753 |
| 21 | flame | 10,608 |
| 22 | unity-mcp | 10,377 |
| 23 | Pixelorama | 9,667 |
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