A list of paid, free or open source C++ (C plus plus) game engine libraries, plugins and tools including 2D and 3D game engines and frameworks, cross platform game engines and more. Sourced under a creative commons. This list will be updated regularly. Email over the URL, if you wish to be included.

C++ game engine libraries

  • Acid – A high speed C++17 Vulkan game engine. [MIT]
  • Allegro – A cross-platform library mainly aimed for video games and multimedia programming. [zlib]
  • Cocos2d-x – A multi-platform framework for building 2d games, interactive books, demos and other graphical applications. [MIT]
  • Corange – A game engine written in pure C, SDL and OpenGL. [BSD]
  • crown – Crown is a general purpose data-driven game engine, written from scratch in orthodox C++ with a minimalistic and data-oriented design philosophy in mind. [MIT]
  • delta3d – A robust simulation platform. [LGPL2]
  • EnTT – Gaming meets modern C++. [MIT]
  • GamePlay – A cross-platform native C++ game framework for creating 2D/3D mobile and desktop games. [Apache2]
  • Godot – A fully featured, open source, MIT licensed, game engine. [MIT]
  • Grit – Community project to build a free game engine for implementing open world 3D games. [MIT]
  • Halley – A lightweight game engine written in C++14 with a “true” entity-component system. [Apache 2.0]
  • KlayGE – a cross-platform open source game engine with plugin-based architecture. [GPLv2] website
  • nCine – A cross-platform 2D game engine with an emphasis on performance, written in C++11 and optionally scriptable in Lua. [MIT] website
  • o3de – An open-source, real-time, multi-platform 3D engine based on Amazon Lumberyard. [Apache2] website
  • OpenXRay – a community-modified X-Ray engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series. [Modified BSD/non-commercial only]
  • Oxygine – A cross-platform 2D C++ game engine. [MIT]
  • Panda3D – A game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. [Modified BSD] website
  • PixelGameEngine – The official distribution of olcPixelGameEngine, a tool used in javidx9’s YouTube videos and projects. [OLC3]
  • Polycode – A cross-platform framework for creative code in C++ (with Lua bindings). [MIT] website
  • quakeforge – Actively maintained branch of the original Quake engine code with 20+ years of development. [GPL-2.0]
  • raylib – A simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming. [zlib/libpng] website
  • Spring – A powerful free cross-platform RTS game engine. [GPLv2/GPLv3] website
  • Torque2D – An open-source and cross-platform C++ engine built for 2D game development. [MIT] website
  • Torque3D – An open-source C++ engine built for 3D game development. [MIT] website
  • toy engine – toy is a thin and modular c++ game engine and offers simple expressive c++ idioms to design full featured 2D or 3D games in fast iterations.
  • Urho3D – A free lightweight, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine implemented in C++. Greatly inspired by OGRE and Horde3D. [MIT]
  • ezEngine – Is a free, open-source game engine written in C++. Its philosophy is to be modular and flexible, such that it can be adapted to many different use cases. [MIT] website

Tags: c++, open source, c plus plus, c++ tools, c++ plugins, c++ libraries, c plus plus tools, c plus plus plugins, c plus plus libraries, game engine, 2d game engine, 3d game engine, 3d game frameworks, 2d game framework, cross platform game engine, c++ game engine, c++ 2d game engine, c++ 3d game engine, c++ 3d game frameworks, c++ 2d game framework, c++ cross platform game engine

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Portions of this text under: MIT license