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A small state-of-the-art study on custom engines

CUSTOM GAME ENGINES: A Small Study

a_plague_tale

A couple of weeks ago I played (and finished) A Plague Tale, a game by Asobo Studio. I was really captivated by the game, not only by the beautiful graphics but also by the story and the locations in the game. I decided to investigate a bit about the game tech and I was surprised to see it was developed with a custom engine by a relatively small studio. I know there are some companies using custom engines but it's very difficult to find a detailed market study with that kind of information curated and updated. So this article.

Nowadays lots of companies choose engines like Unreal or Unity for their games (or that's what lot of people think) because developing a custom AAA-level engine requires lots of resources, so, I decided to list here some of the most popular custom engines with the team-sizes and notable titles released with those engines.

Most of the engines listed here have been developed along the years with multiple iterations and multiple videogames, those engines have gone through several versions or even complete (or semi-complete) rewrites from scratch, with a consequent engine name change. Also, important to note, most of those engines use numerous middleware for specific functionalities (Platform, Physics, Network, Vegetation, UI, Rendering, Audio...).

*NOTE: I tried to be as much accurate as possible with the information about the employees count (I checked the companies websites, Wikipedia or company LinkedIn) but take it with a grain of salt (some employees numbers could not be up to date).

The BIG Companies

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*From left to right: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Final Fantasy XV, Red Dead Redemption 2

Below list is for very big corporations, sometimes with complex corporate structures with several divisions (not only focused on videogames) and various studios/subsidiaries developing games. Some of them work with multiple engines, not only custom ones but also licensed ones.

Company Employees Studios Engine(s) Notable Games
Activision/Blizzard ~9200 ~9 custom engine(s) Warcraft series, Diablo series, Starcraft series, Call of Duty series, Overwatch
Electronic Arts ~9300 ~36 Frostbite Star Wars Battlefront II, Anthem, Battlefield 1/V, FIFA 20, Need for Speed series
Ubisoft ~16000 ~54 AnvilNext 2.0 Assassin's Creed series
Disrupt engine Watch Dogs series
UbiArt Framework Rayman Legends, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts
Snowdrop Tom Clancy's The Division 2, The Settlers
Dunia (CryEngine-based) FarCry series
Silex (Anvil-based) Ghost Recon Wildlands
LEAD engine Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series
Dunia-based The Crew
Capcom +2800 ~15 MT Framework Monster Hunter: World
RE Engine Resident Evil 7, Devil May Cry 5, RE2:Remake, RE3:Remake
Konami +10000 ~30 Fox Engine Pro Evolution Soccer series, Metal Gear Solid V
Square Enix +4600 ~18 Luminous Studio Final Fantasy XV
Nintendo +6100 ~8 custom engine(s) Zelda: BOTW, Mario Odyssey
Riot Games ~2500 ~3 custom engine League of Legends
Rockstar +2000 ~9 RAGE engine GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2
CD Projekt +1100 ~4 REDEngine 3 The Witcher 3
Epic +1000 ~11 Unreal Engine 4 Fortnite

Usually those companies invest in custom engines to have full control over the technology and also avoid the revenue cut imposed by the licensed engines. Despite that fact, there are some big companies that in the latest years have chosen Unreal Engine for their productions, the most notable cases are:

  • Capcom is using Unreal for the new Street Fighter V title.
  • Bandai Namco latest big hits are using Unreal: Jump Force, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Tales of Arise.
  • Square Enix also moved to Unreal for several new titles: Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy VII Remake

It's interesting to see that those big three are Japanesse companies, I wonder if that's maybe a market trend for Japan. Also to note, the chinesse holding Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games, I bet it has some influence in the Asian market.

Middle-size Studios

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*From left to right: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, A Plague Tale

Here we have the medium-small companies that decided to create their custom technology for their titles.

The number of employees could be a nice reference to consider because a custom game engine is usually developed in-house (I mean, not outsourced) but note that some of those companies could have a big number of people due to in-house artist/audio teams, while other companies out-source those parts of the development.

It would be really nice to know how many engineers are working on the engine division for each company, I'm sure there would be some big surprises, probably by the low number of engineers working in the engine and tools!

Also interesting to know more info about the tooling included with those engines, it's really difficult to have access to that kind of information. Engines tooling is usually a hidden-secret (beside some GDC presentations or some quick showcase videos).

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*From left to right: Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Death Stranding

Company Employees Engine Notable Games
Creative Assembly +650 Warscape Engine Total War series
Bungie ~600 Tiger Engine Destiny series
Infinity Ward +500 IW 7.0 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Eidos-Montréal ~500 Dawn Engine (Glacier2-based) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Bethesda ~400 Creation Engine Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76
Valve Corp. ~360 Source 2 Dota 2, Half-Life: Alyx
Crystal Dynamics ~350 Foundation Engine Rise/Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Avalanche Studios ~320 Apex engine Just Cause series, Renegade Ops, Mad Max, RAGE 2
Naughty Dog +300 Naughty Dog Game Engine Uncharted series, Last of Us
Rebellion Developments ~300 Asura engine Alien vs. Predator series, Sniper Elite series
Techland ~300 Chrome Engine 6 Dying Light
Crytek ~290 CryEngine V The Climb, Hunt:Showdown
From Software +280 Dark Souls engine Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro
Remedy +250 Northlight Engine Quantum Break, Control
Guerrilla Games +250 Decima Killzone Shadow Fall, Until Dawn, Horizon Zero Dawn
Larian Studios +250 Divinity Engine Divinity series
Platinum Games ~250 Platinum Engine NieR Automata, Bayonetta, Vanquish
Santa Monica Studio +200 custom engine God Of War series
id Software +200 idTech 6/7 Doom, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein series
Sucker Punch +200 custom engine Infamous Second Son, Ghost of Tsushima?
Insomniac Games ~180 Insomniac Engine Rachet&Clank series, Marvel's Spider-Man
Quantic Dreams ~180 custom engine Detroit: Become Human
IO Interactive ~170 Glacier2 Hitman series
Asobo Studio +140 Zouna A Plague Tale
Ready At Dawn ~120 custom engine The Order: 1886, Lone Echo
Mercury Steam ~110 custom engine Spacelords, Castlevania:Lords of Shadow series
Monolith Productions +100 LithTech F.E.A.R. series, Condemned series, Shadow of Mordor/War
11 Bit Studios ~100 Liquid Engine Frostpunk
Frozenbyte ~100 Storm3D Trine series, Shadowgrounds
Kylotonn ~100 KtEngine WRC series, TT Isle of Man series, V-Rally 4
TaleWorlds Entertainment ~100 custom engine Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Daedalic Entertainment ~90 Visionaire Studio The Whispered World, Deponia series
Media Molecule ~80 Bubblebath Engine Dreams
Paradox Development Studio ~80 Clausewitz Engine Imperator: Rome, Stellaris, Europa Universalis series
Deck13 ~70 Fledge Lords of the Fallen, The Surge, The Surge 2, Atlas Fallen
Nihon Falcom ~60 Yamaneko Engine Ys VII, Ys VIII, Ys IX
Croteam +40 Serious Engine The Talos Principle, Serious Sam series

Some observations from this list:

  • Rise of the Tomb Raider lists only 10 programmers working on Foundation engine in the credits, probably a good reference number to get an idea of the people working on the core engine.
  • Kojima Productions use Decima engine, developed by Guerrilla Games, for Death Stranding, previously they used Fox Engine for Metal Gear Solid V.
  • Media Molecule latest game/engine (Dreams) seems to have been developed by only ~15 coders, amazing!
  • Companies targeting one single platform, usually have less restrictions and can push the limits of that platform. Unfortunately, that's a luxury that most companies can not afford.
  • Asobo Studio, the company that originated this market study is not that small... but, like other companies, they seem to work in multiple titles in parallel.
  • Very nice to see that some of the engines have entries in the Wikipedia with some details and titles released, it should be a must.

Small-size Studios (Indie Studios)

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*From left to right: The Witness, No Man's Sky, X-Morph Defense

Here we have some really small studios that also choose to develop a custom engine for their games. Note that most of those engines rely on other libraries/frameworks for certain parts of the game, the common choices we find are SDL (cross-platform graphics/input), OGRE (rendering engine), MonoGame (cross-platform game framework, also relyes on SDL, SharpDX, OpenTK, OpenAL-Soft...).

One question many people could ask is, what parts of the engine are actually coded by the developers? Well, it depends, but usually coders take care of the screen-manager, entities-manager and content-manager as well as the wrappers/interfaces to the external libraries.

Second question, what parts of the engine usually rely on external libraries/middleware? It also depends on the company resources but usually audio-system, physics, rendering, networking, ui-system, terrain-system, vegetation-system and some other pieces.

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*From left to right: Factorio, Thimbleweed Park, Owlboy

On the following list (and the next one below) I added the publishing date (only +2012) and the link to Steam for all the games... there are not many games with custom engine from small studios out there and I think they deserve to be recognized and supported.

Company Employees Engine Notable Games
Runic Games ~40 OGRE-based Hob (2017), Tochlight II (2012)
Klei Entertainment 35 custom engine Invisible, Inc. (2016), Don't Starve Together (2016), Shank series
Shiro Games ~30 Heaps.io Northgard (2018), Evoland (2013), Evoland II (2015)
Hello Games ~25 No Man's Sky Engine No Man's Sky (2016)
Frictional Games ~25 HPL engine SOMA (2015), Amnesia series
DrinkBox Studios ~25 custom engine Guacamelee (2013), Guacamelee! 2 (2018), Severed (2016)
Supergiant Games ~20 MonoGame-based Hades (2019), Pyre (2017), Transistor (2014)
Wube Software ~20 Allegro/SDL-based Factorio (2019)
Chucklefish ~20 Halley Engine Wargroove (2019), Starbound (2016)
Ronimo Games ~17 RoniTech Engine (SDL) Awesomenauts (2017)
Lab Zero Games ~17 Z-Engine Indivisible (2019), Skullgirls (2013)
Introversion Software ~14 SystemIV (SDL) Prison Architect (2015)
Exor Studios ~14 OGRE-based Schmetterling The Riftbreaker (2020), X-Morph: Defense (2017)
Tribute Games ~11 MonoGame-based Flinthook (2017), Mercenary Kings (2014)
Thekla Inc. (Jonathan Blow) ~10 custom engine The Witness (2016)
Numantian Games ~10 custom engine They Are Billions (2019), Lords of Xulimia (2014)
Nysko Games Ltd. ~10 custom engine The Dwarves of Glistenveld (2019)
Passtech Games 10 OEngine Curse of the Dead Gods (2020)
Terrible Toybox (Ron Gilbert) 9 custom engine (SDL) Thimbleweed Park (2017)
Radical Fish Games 8 Impact-based (JS) CrossCode (2018)
Matt Makes Games (Matt Thorson) ~7 MonoGame-based Celeste (2018), TowerFall Ascension (2014)
Coilworks ~7 custom engine Super Cloudbuilt (2017), Cloudbuilt (2014)
Lo-fi Games (Chris Hunt) 6 OGRE-based Kenshi (2018)
D-Pad Studio 6 MonoGame-based Owlboy (2016)
BitKid, Inc. 6 MonoGame-based CHASM (2020)
Double Damage Games 5 OGRE-based Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (2019), Rebel Galaxy (2015)
Almost Human Games 4 custom engine Legend of Grimrock (2012), Legend of Grimrock 2 (2014)
Wolfire Games 4 Phoenix Engine Overgrowth (2017)
Nuke Nine 3 custom engine Vagante (2019)
Mega Crit Games 3 custom engine Slay the Spire (2017)

Some observations from this list:

  • Nicolas Cannasse, co-founder of Shiro Games, is the the developer of Haxe programming language and Heaps engine, used by Motion Twin for Dead Cells (2017).
  • Hello Games is a very small studio considering the size of No Man's Sky and that they use a custom engine. Really impressive!
  • Runic Games was dissolved in November 2017, the founders created Double Damage, now they are working on Echtra Games on Torchlight III.
  • Rodrigo Braz Monteiro, Chucklefish CTO, is the person in charge of Halley engine, actually the engine is open-source!
  • In most of those studios the people in charge of creating the game engine it's only 1-3 persons!
  • Lo-fi Games was a one-man team (Chris Hunt) for more than 6 years!
  • Some of the games in this list took +5 years of development!
  • Not many games... a couple of hits per year...

One-man custom engines

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*From left to right: Stardew Valley, ScourgeBringer, Eagle Island

Finally, the list of the heroes.

Games developed by 1-2 people with custom game engines, engines mostly coded by one person! Respect.

Creating an engine and a game from scratch to the point of publishing it is an extraordinary accomplishment, not many people in the world is ready for that. Almost all of them are 2D games, usually with very small budgets and developed along multiple years. Congratulations to the developers!

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*From left to right: Axiom Verge, Ghost 1.0, Remnants of Naezith

Company/Developer People Engine Notable Game(s)
Lizardcube (Ben Fiquet and Omar Cornut) 2 custom engine Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (2017)
Guard Crush Games (Jordi Asensio and Cyrille Lagarigue) 2 MonoGame-based Streets of Rage 4
Pocketwatch Games (Andy Schatz) 2? MonoGame-based Tooth and Tail (2017)
Justin Ma and Matthew Davis 2 custom engine FTL: Faster Than Light (2012)
Ed Key and David Kanaga 2 custom engine Proteus (2013)
Mountain Sheep 2 custom engine Hardland (2019)
Flying Oak Games (Thomas Altenburger and Florian Hurtaut) 2 MonoGame-based Neuro Voider (2016), ScourgeBringer(2020)
Marc Flury and Brian Gibson 2 custom engine Thumper (2016)
Jochum Skoglund and Niklas Myrberg 2 custom engine Heroes of Hammerwatch (2018), Hammerwatch (2013)
Villa Gorilla (Jens Andersson and Mattias Snygg) 2 custom engine Yoku's Island Express (2018)
Two Mammoths (Piotr Turecki and Marcin Turecki) 2 custom engine Archaica: The Path of Light (2017)
Bare Mettle Entertainment (Madoc Evans) 1? custom engine Exanima (2015)
Lucas Pope 1 OpenFL-based Papers, Please (2013)
Terry Cavanagh 1 custom engine Super Hexagon (2012)
Francisco Tellez 1 SDL-based Ghost 1.0 (2016), UnEpic (2014)
Grid Sage Games (Josh Ge) 1 SDL-based Cogmind (2017)
Luke Hodorowicz 1 custom engine Banished (2014)
Thomas Happ 1 (5 years) MonoGame-based Axiom Verge (2015)
James Silva 1 MonoGame-based Salt and Sanctuary (2016)
Eric Barone 1 (4 years) MonoGame-based Stardew Valley (2016)
Tolga Ay 1 SFML-based Remnant of Naezith (2018)
Nick Gregory 1 (5 years) MonoGame-based Eagle Island (2019)
bitBull Ltd. (James Closs) 1 (4 years) MonoGame-based Jetboard Joust (2020)
Benjamin Porter 1 (8 years) SFML-based MoonQuest (2020)
Randall Foster 1 (7 years) custom engine Kid Baby: Starchild (2019)
Dennis Gustafsson 1 custom engine Teardown (2020)
Christian Whitehead 1 Star Engine Sonic Mania (2017)
Positech Games (Cliff Harris) 1 custom engine Production Line (2019), Democracy 3 (2013), Gratuitous Space Battles (2015)
Frank Lucas 1 custom engine Angeldust (2019)
Zachtronics (Zach Barth) 1 custom engine MOLEK-SYNTEZ (2019), EXAPUNKS (2018), SHENZHEN I/O (2016), Opus Magnum (2017)
Lunar Ray Games (Bodie Lee) 1 custom engine Timespinner (2018)
sebagamesdev 1 custom engine Fight And Rage (2017)
Loïc Dansart 1 custom engine Melody's Escape (2016)

Some observations from this list:

  • Some of those teams are formed by 1-2 people but probably grew at some point and/or outsourced some parts of the development (art, audio...). Usually the publisher also helps with some resources (localization, marketing...).
  • Omar Cornut from Lizardcube is the main programmer for Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap engine and also the developer of Dear ImGui, a free and open-source immediate-mode gui library used by lots of AAA custom engines.
  • Ben Fiquet from Lizardcube is also the main artist for Streets of Rage 4, the custom engine of Guard Crush Games is written by Cyrille Lagarigue.
  • Marc Flury programmed Thumper game engine rejecting the OOP paradigm in favor of a procedural programming approach.
  • Christian Whitehead is the creator of Star Engine used in Sonic Mania but Headcannon (Simon Thomley) and PagodaWest Games (Jared Kasl and Tom Fry) were also involved in the development of the game.
  • Some of the games in this list took +5 years of development!
  • Not many games... a couple of hits per year...

There are some other remarkable games using custom engines that worth mentioning: Minecraft (2011), Braid (2009), Super Meat Boy (2010), Terraria (2011), Dustforce (2012), Sword and Sorcery EP (2012), FEZ (2013), Dust: An Elysian Tail (2013), Rogue Legacy (2013), Dyad (2012), SpaceChem (2013), Darkest Dungeon (2016), Scrap Mechanic (2016), Battle Brothers (2015), Renowned Explorers (2015), Yuppie Psycho (2019), Surviving Mars (2018), The End Is Nigh (2017), The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth (2017), The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014), BattleBlock Theater (2013), Full Metal Furies (2017), Binding of Isaac (2011), Rusted Warfare (2017).

Conclusions

I'll start saying I'm biased, I'm really passionate about videogames-making technologies and I admire custom engines and game-making tools. I also contributed to custom engines ecosystem with my grain of salt: raylib and several game-making tools. I prefer a custom engine over a licensed one, I consider that the extra amount of effort put into the product usually translates into some specific great mechanic or some amazing in-game details.

Said that, I must admit that creating a custom engine is a big endeavour and not many people/companies are ready for that. I recognize Unity (and Unreal to less extend) have really democratized videogames development, lots of small-medium size companies can use Unity today to develop games quickly, sometimes, with very low budgets... But, still, lots of big companies prefer to rely on their own custom technologies.

From my gamedev-teacher perspective, I think students should learn how engines work internally with as much detail as possible. Relying only on engines like Unity/Unreal for education to allow students develop eye-candy project in short-time is not the way to go. At the end of the day, someone has to write the engine and the tools!

NOTE: Feedback and improvements are welcome! :)

@zenorogue
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I feel that people today overestimate how hard creating a game engine is, or maybe they underestimate the other aspects of game development. For clarity, I mean here a basic engine (for example, a custom engine for a 2D game), not a photorealistic and generic 3D game engine like Unity (that definitely is very hard and probably not worth reinventing the wheel without a good reason).

I have been creating games of various genres in 90's as a way to teach myself programming; free engines like Unity obviously did not exist then. My games were not commercial quality, but they worked. Other people made lots of small shareware games. That was in the 90's. It became much easier with better programming languages, better hardware (basic games work well even if you do not optimize), and libraries such as SDL. For many genres, using an engine such as Unity does not help much, it probably makes it harder. I agree that creating a cool 2D game + engine is an extraordinary achievement, but most of this is in the "cool game" part. (And the game can be amazing even though it is simple engine-wise; lots of people assume that advanced engine = good game.)

@bgolus
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bgolus commented Apr 5, 2023

Splinter Cell's "LEAD Engine" is really Unreal 2.5. That's a game from an era where Epic was letting companies pay extra so they didn't have to say they were using Unreal and could pretend to be using a different engine. Some Star Wars games and the unreleased Indiana Jones game are other infamous examples of this.

@HogJonny-AMZN
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Bluepoint (Sony SIE) develops custom engine technology used across a large number of games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluepoint_Games

@simonschreibt-code
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simonschreibt-code commented Apr 6, 2023

Egosoft is ~35-40 People strong, located in Germany, creates the X-Series (Space Simulation) with currently X4: Kingdom End. They use their own tech now called X Tech 5.

@tchendos
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tchendos commented Apr 6, 2023

Space Engineers developed by Keen Software House uses inhouse developed custom engine VRAGE (XNA based, Havok physics).

@vaspoul
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vaspoul commented Apr 6, 2023

TT Games has developed dozens of LEGO games using a custom engine, most recently NTT which was used on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

@PatrickHenschel
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Bioware (or better Interplay's Black Isle Studios) used the custome Infinity Engine for Baldurs Gate I & II, Icewind Dale,... which was a quite popular game engine for the modding community as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare#Technology
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity_Engine

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Apr 16, 2023

Thank you very much to everyone that commented and provided additional info!

This article is already 4 years old and it definitely needs a review but I didn't have time to do it yet...

Thanks again the overwhelming reception, I never expected this small article to become so popular. It's amazing to see so many studios and developers still using custom engines! Congratulations! :)

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Apr 16, 2023

Adding new studio data received by mail:

Balcony Team is a small 3 person indie studio, developers of Balrum (2016) and Deepest Chamber (2021), using a custom engine.

Balrum: https://store.steampowered.com/app/424250/Balrum/
Deepest Chamber: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1552080/Deepest_Chamber_Resurrection/

@zenorogue
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(I would say that my earlier comment was that the selection of one-man custom engines seems mostly random. I am a roguelike developer (in the traditional meaning of "roguelike"). In this genre, you have listed Cogmind, which is a game everyone should try, and has nice ASCII animations, but I am not sure whether it is especially interesting engine-wise. In this genre there is also Jupiter Hell (an attempt to do a roguelike with modern 3D graphics, using a custom engine), ToME (its "T-Engine" has been used to create a few smaller roguelikes), our HyperRogue (its engine supports 2D and 3D true non-Euclidean geometry and has been used for a few smaller games and visualizations), some roguelikes use other frameworks such as NotEye or Libtcod which could be called engines, and other games in the genre are likely to use custom engines too, because Unity and likes do not help that much. And they are generally one-man projects or made by or small teams.)

@omd24
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omd24 commented Sep 13, 2023

Atlas Fallen can be added to the list of games developed with Fledge.

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Sep 13, 2023

@omd24 Oh! That one is really new and it looks amazing! Congratulations!

Added to the list!

@kosua20
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kosua20 commented Sep 13, 2023

Thank you for this very interesting list!

If you're still looking for engines to add to the list, the french studio Spiders Games (~70 people) has been working with their internal Silk Engine for almost 15 years now. It started as a fork of Sony's Phyre Engine, but has now considerably evolved with many new features to focus on the production of RPGs targeting PC and high-end consoles.

The most recent games released are GreedFall and Steelrising. (Disclaimer: I'm a graphics programmer there)

@wisnunugroho21
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Some update for Nihon Falcom

Now, They have 70 employees.
Please add Trails Through Daybreak and Ys X for Notable Games

@wisnunugroho21
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For RE Engine, I think it's much better if you link it to Official Youtube Video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibv9319dIQA

@orangy
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orangy commented Nov 30, 2023

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Nov 30, 2023

@kosua20 thanks for the addition! I didn't know about Silk Engine! Games look really great! Congrats! :D

@wisnunugroho21 thanks for updated info and the RE Engine link!

@orangy Wow! Really nice! Congrats on the release!

@orangy
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orangy commented Nov 30, 2023

@raysan5 no, no, that's not me, that's @kevglass!

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Nov 30, 2023

@orangy Oh! Ok! Then, congrats on the custom engine and the game release @kevglass! 😄

@ElhamAryanpur
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Hey there raysan, this was an amazing review!

As a solo engine developer, this really motivated me. I always just assumed everyone used Unity/UE/Godot for their games and population of in-house nowadays were few and far between only for special cases. This was very eye opening!

My enginedev journey started cuz of Raylib so big fan of your work!!!

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Jan 5, 2024

@ElhamAryanpur Thanks! Glad you like it! Congratulations on your Blue Engine! 😄

@ElhamAryanpur
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@raysan5 thank you so much! I'm honored

@alexGuntha
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Keen Games (Enshrouded) (Not to be confused with Keen Software House) seems to use a custom engine, can anyone confirm?

@coelhucas
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For others curious about the theme, there's also Propeller, Yacht Club Games' engine that was used at least for Plague of Shadows, Specter of Torment, King of Cards, and Showdown while it's being used to Mina the Hollower as well.

@THEKAI64
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THEKAI64 commented Mar 5, 2024

Super meat boy doesn't really use a custom engine, it runs on flash, doesn't it?
The original binding of Isaac definitely does, as does battle block theater.

I just noticed those in the custom engine list and don't quite think it's accurate

@alexGuntha
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@THEKAI64 The original Meat Boy flash game was indeed a Flash Game, but Super Meat Boy was made with a custom game engine which supported pretty much any asset made in Flash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Meat_Boy
https://isetta.io/interviews/TommyRefenes-interview/

@raysan5
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raysan5 commented Mar 7, 2024

@alexGuntha thank you very much for the details!

@Angluca
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Angluca commented Apr 10, 2024

There's a lot of content, and your writing is great.
I want to develop game using raylib after learn all the examples.

@PixelRick
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PixelRick commented Sep 21, 2024

A new game called Tiny Glade uses a custom engine. It is made by a tiny indie studio called Pounce Light, comprising two developers: Anastasia Opara and Tomasz Stachowiak.
Tomasz (h3r2tic) open-sourced a cool (imo) toy renderer that runs some of the techniques used in the game: https://github.com/h3r2tic/kajiya.

@ngyikp
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ngyikp commented Nov 22, 2024

Animal Well is a one-person dev team that's also uses a custom engine

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