Lunar Engine

Lunar Engine is an open source 2D game engine and visual editor. It allows developers and hobbyists to create 2D games through a visual environment without writing code. Key features include sprite and animation support, tilemap editing, user interface tools, and scripting APIs.

Gaming Software Game Engines

2d open-source visual-editor game-development sprite-editor tilemap-editor scripting-api

Lunar Engine alternatives ➤

Lunar Engine: Open Source 2D Game Engine & Visual Editor

An open source 2D game engine and visual editor for creating 2D games through a visual environment without writing code, featuring sprite and animation support, tilemap editing, user interface tools, and scripting APIs.

What is Lunar Engine?

Lunar Engine is a free, open source 2D game engine and visual editor developed by students from the Ludum Dare game jam community. It provides a complete toolset for building 2D games without the need to write code.

The visual editor allows users to create game scenes by dragging and dropping sprites, tiles, backgrounds, user interfaces, and other game elements. Built-in tools help organize sprites into reusable animations. Users can paint detailed 2D levels with the integrated tilemap editor. The engine handles rendering, asset management, input, physics, and more behind the scenes.

For more customization without coding, Lunar Engine offers a visual scripting system. Users can use drag and drop nodes for gameplay logic, effects, AI behaviors, and more. For expert users, an API offers lower level script control via Lua. The editor runs games live for rapid testing and iteration.

With cross-platform exports, games made in Lunar Engine can publish to Windows, Mac, Linux, HTML5, Android, and iOS. The editor and runtime are both MIT licensed and hosted on GitHub with an active community contributing plugins, documentation, and source code.

Lunar Engine Features

Features

Visual editor for building 2D games
Sprite and animation support
Tilemap editing
User interface tools
Scripting APIs
Cross-platform support

Pricing

Open Source
Free

Pros

Free and open source

Easy to use drag and drop interface

Large asset store

Active community support

Frequent updates

Cons

Limited 3D support

Steep learning curve for advanced features

Not as performant as proprietary engines

Lacks some advanced rendering features

Official Links

Official Website
https://github.com/JohnLamontagne/Lunar-Engine

The Best Lunar Engine Alternatives

Top Gaming Software and Game Engines and other similar apps like Lunar Engine

Here are some alternatives to Lunar Engine:

RPG Maker

Unreal Engine

Godot Engine

GDevelop

Construct 2

Rogue Engine

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RPG Maker

RPG Maker is a popular game development tool focused on creating role-playing games. First launched in 1992 by ASCII, there have been several iterations of the software over the years by different developers.At its core, RPG Maker provides a simple graphical interface and suite of tools that let users build...

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Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine is a complete suite of creation tools designed for anyone working with real-time 3D. It provides a real-time 3D engine along with visual scripting tools to accelerate development across multiple platforms including consoles, mobile, PC, and VR. Originally developed for first-person shooters, Unreal Engine has expanded to many...

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Godot Engine

Godot Engine is a feature-packed, cross-platform game engine designed for 2D and 3D game development. It is completely free and open source under the MIT license.Some key features and capabilities of Godot Engine include:Intuitive and easy-to-use interface for quick development iterationsComprehensive set of 2D and 3D nodes for crafting game...

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GDevelop

GDevelop is an open-source, cross-platform 2D game engine and IDE. It allows users with no coding knowledge to quickly build and deploy games using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and behaviors system.Key features of GDevelop include:Visual scripting system using events and conditions rather than codeSupport for multiple platforms including Windows, Mac,...

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Construct 2

Construct 2 is a flexible and intuitive 2D game creator optimized for building HTML5 games that can be played across browsers and mobile devices. It features a drag-and-drop interface that allows users to quickly assemble games without needing to write any code.Some key features and benefits of Construct 2 include:Visual...

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Rogue Engine

Rogue Engine is an open-source, C# game engine designed specifically for developing roguelike games. It handles many common roguelike development tasks out of the box so developers can focus on content and gameplay.Some key features of Rogue Engine include:Flexible map generation with built-in algorithms like cellular automata, drunkard walk, various...

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Bevy Game Engine

The Bevy Game Engine is an open-source game engine written in Rust that is focused on usability, performance, and productivity. Some key things to know about Bevy:It utilizes the Entity Component System pattern which provides a flexible and extensible architecture for game development.Bevy is written in Rust which gives it...

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Upbge

Upbge (Uchronia Project Blender Game Engine) is an open-source 3D game engine that is a fork of the Blender Game Engine integrated into the Blender 3D modeling and animation software. Upbge aims to improve and extend the original Blender Game Engine by fixing bugs, adding new features, and enhancing overall...

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Pixel Game Maker MV

Pixel Game Maker MV is a 2D game engine designed for making retro-style games with pixel art graphics. It provides a complete, user-friendly game development environment for beginners and experts alike.Some key features include:Intuitive drag-and-drop interface for placing sprites, tiles, and objectsComprehensive sprite editors for drawing and animating 2D pixel...

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Wicked Engine

Wicked Engine is an open-source 3D game engine written in C++ that is designed for high-performance real-time rendering. It supports Windows and Linux platforms and can utilize modern low-level graphics APIs like Vulkan, DirectX 12, and Metal to take advantage of modern GPU capabilities.Some key features of Wicked Engine include:Real-time...

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MicroStudio

microStudio is a versatile graphics and animation software designed for hobbyists, indie developers, students, and other artists interested in 2D and 3D content creation. It comes packed with an intuitive and accessible toolset focused on key artwork and animation capabilities.Some of the core features of microStudio include:Powerful 2D vector and...

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Flax Engine

Flax Engine is an open-source C# game engine designed for high performance and extensibility. It uses a modern data-oriented architecture to allow building complex games with large, detailed worlds.Some key features of Flax Engine include:Scene system based on archetypes and chunked rendering for efficient handling of large worldsMultithreaded systems for...

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