CUSTOM GAME ENGINES
A comprehensive list of custom game engines. This list is based on a 2020 article: custom_game_engines_small_study
The list has been moved to a custom repo to allow contributors to improve it! Additions and improvements are really welcome!!!
Introduction
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, still, there are many big/small companies or even individuals that choose to create their custom engines for their games. In this page there are some of those engines listed.
Some points to consider:
- The line between what can be considered an engine or a framework or just a library could be blurry. Note that not all engines have a set of tooling for easy interaction!
- 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...).
- About the employees count, take it with a grain of salt, it was updated with aproximate numbers from 2020 (checked on the companies websites, Wikipedia or LinkedIn).
AAA Engines: The BIG Companies
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 those companies 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 | Hero Engine (2010+), custom engine (2009) | 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 |
AA Engines: Middle-size Studios
Here we have the medium-small companies that decided to create their custom technology for their titles.
| Company | Employees | Engine | Notable Games |
|---|
| Creative Assembly | +650 | Warscape Engine | Total War series |
| Mojang | ~600 | custom engine (LWJGL for Java Edition) | Minecraft 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 |
AA Engines: Small-size Studios (Indie Studios)
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 relies on SDL, SharpDX, OpenTK, OpenAL-Soft...).
| Company | Employees | Engine | Notable Games |
|---|
| Stepmania | +50 | Stepmania | In the Groove (2004), Pump it Up Pro (2007), Pump it up Infinity (2013), StepManiaX (2017), Project Outfox (2018), More |
| 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 | Forge-based (2019+) , MonoGame-based | Hades (2019), Pyre (2017), Transistor (2014) |
| Wube Software | ~20 | Allegro/SDL-based | Factorio (2019) |
| Chucklefish | ~20 | Halley Engine | Wargroove (2019), Starbound (2016) |
| Re-Logic | ~19 | XNA-based | Terraria (2011) |
| 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) |
| ppy | +13 | custom engine (XNA) | osu! (2007) |
| | osu!framework | osu!lazer (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 the Gods (2020) |
| Terrible Toybox (Ron Gilbert) | 9 | custom engine (SDL) | Thimbleweed Park (2017) |
| Motion Twin | 8 | Heaps.io | Dead Cells (2018) |
| Radical Fish Games | 8 | Impact-based (JS) | CrossCode (2018) |
| Maddy Makes Games (Madeline 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) |
| Nolla Games | ~6 | Falling Everything Engine | Noita (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) |
| Team Meat | ~4 | Tommunism Engine | Super Meat Boy (2010) |
| Polytron | ~4 | custom engine | FEZ (2013) |
| Nuke Nine | 3 | custom engine | Vagante (2019) |
| Mega Crit Games | 3 | custom engine | Slay the Spire (2017) |
One-person custom engines
Games developed by 1-2 people with custom game engines, engines mostly coded by one person! Respect.
| Company/Developer | People | Engine | Notable Game(s) |
|---|
| Bay 12 Games | 2* | custom engine | Dwarf Fortress (2006) |
| 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 | Retro Engine | Sonic Mania (2017), Penny’s Big Breakaway (2024) |
| 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) |
| Billy Basso | 1 | custom engine | Animal Well (2024) |
| Jonathan Blow | 1 | XNA-based | Braid (2009) |
| Vittorio Romeo | 1 | custom engine 1, 2 | Open Hexagon (2021), BubbleByte (2025) |
| Pounce Light | 1 | Bevy-based | Tiny Glade (2024) |
| LocalThunk | 1 | LÖVE-based | Balatro (2024) |
| ThinMatrix | 1 | custom engine | Equilinox (2018) |
TODO: Add below entries to the above lists
There are some other remarkable games using custom engines that worth mentioning: Dustforce (2012), Sword and Sorcery EP (2012), 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).
Final Words
Feedback and improvements are welcome! :)
/custom_game_engines