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+--- Thread: Any interesting esoteric game engines? (/showthread.php?tid=3547)
Any interesting esoteric game engines? - littlelum - 06-13-2026
Everyone knows about Godot, Unity, and GameMaker, but what about some of the more obscure ones? Share them here!
The first that I'd like to share is gbStudio. It is the engine that I used for my fangame, Yet Another Mario Land. What makes it interesting is that makes ROMs for the GameBoy, Super GameBoy, and GameBoy Color! Once you wrap your head around the hardware quirks, the engine is surprisingly beginner friendly. It is really flexible too, I've seen some really neat stuff made with it.
Another is MegaZeux. I've never used it, but it's been in development since the 90s! It's mainly an ASCII-esqe engine. It has been ported to a lot of systems too, such as the DS and Wii. It is based on ZZT, which its creator went on to make Unreal.
Anyone have any other interesting or obscure game engines?
RE: Any interesting esoteric game engines? - Louis Paul - 06-14-2026
I'll share four game engines that I have heard on the Internet, in the order of oldest to newest:
The first and second ones for MS-DOS are RSD Game-Maker and DIV Games Studio, I didn't use them so I can't form an opinion.
The third one is Game Editor, it can export for Windows, Linux and GP2X (an obscure handheld console), it has support for Amiga module music (MOD, XM, S3M and IT). There are some example demos of a caveman platform game. Unfortunately there are no updates since 2013.
And the fourth one is GDevelop, it has a visual programming similar to Construct. I tried to create a Mario platform game by viewing a tutorial for Construct 2 and trying to port the logic to GDevelop but I didn't have much success and I lost interest on it.
RE: Any interesting esoteric game engines? - VinnyVideo - 06-16-2026
Ren'Py is a popular engine for making visual novels. That's not a genre I have much experience with, so I'm counting that as esoteric!
RE: Any interesting esoteric game engines? - DJ Coco - 06-16-2026
Stuff like GB Studio and Pyrite 64 indeed pique my interest. I will take a proper look one day...
RE: Any interesting esoteric game engines? - littlelum - 06-16-2026
(06-14-2026, 01:27 AM)Louis Paul Wrote: And the fourth one is GDevelop, it has a visual programming similar to Construct. I tried to create a Mario platform game by viewing a tutorial for Construct 2 and trying to port the logic to GDevelop but I didn't have much success and I lost interest on it.
I did look into GDevelop the other day. It doesn't let you export your game without an account, though, which is a major turn off for me, especially for something that's supposed to be free and open source.
(06-16-2026, 06:16 PM)DJ Coco Wrote: Stuff like GB Studio and Pyrite 64 indeed pique my interest. I will take a proper look one day...
gbStudio gets a major thumbs up for me, one of the easiest engines I've worked with. Development makes good progress too. The last major update added some cool features to it. Only downside is that drag and drop coding is enforced for everything, there isn't really a way to type your code in a traditional manner.
As for Pyrite64, the main thing that is stopping me is the lack of documentation. I tried looking at the example that was provided, but I could barely understand the code there. I hope more progress is made in the user experience side of things.