A game engine is the software layer every game is built on: the renderer, physics, audio, input, scripting and tools that turn assets and code into something playable. Knowing how engines are built — and why some lasted decades while others vanished — is one of the fastest ways to understand real-time C++ programming.
MYCPLUS has been documenting game engines since 2004. This section profiles commercial, open-source and historical engines one at a time. Each one gets a look at its architecture, its scripting model, its license, and a checked list of the games actually built on it, so you don’t have to rely on the attributions copied around the web.
Every profile covers the engine’s status in 2026: whether it’s still maintained, which fork carries it forward, and what to use instead if it has gone. Whether you’re picking an engine for a project, studying engine source code or researching a classic game, start here.
Why MYCPLUS: Engine profiles that check every game attribution against a named source, correct the myths repeated elsewhere, and state each engine’s 2026 status, from the site that has covered game development since 2004. For graphics programming and C++ game code, see the Game Development hub.
The word Esenthel is made by combining two words i.e. Essential and Essence. It is an open source game engine for developing commercial and noncommercial games (it is not Free, there are some limitations, i.e. its code cannot be used to create/improve other game engines.). It is written in C++ and is very easy to use. It uses very clean APIs. It is in development since 2000.
Exult is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) game Engine. It is written in C++ and runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Exult was developed in 2004 to recreate a massive hit game of 1990’s called Ultima VII. It is created for the revival of Ultima VII (The Black Gate) and Ultima VII part2 (Serpent Isle) on modern PCs.
G3D Innovation Engine is a fully featured, cross platform game engine. This is a 3D engine written in C/C++. It is a commercial-grade, open source engine for different platforms i.e. Windows, Linus and Mac OS. The engine is licensed under BSD-2 license and mainly used for teaching purpose.
Anura Game Engine is an open-source, C++-based game engine designed primarily for creating 2D games. It is known for its flexibility, ease of
The Aurora Engine was developed by BioWare using Borland C++ Builder. It is the successor of the Infinity Engine. This game engine
Buildbox is a C++ game development platform founded by Trey Smith in August 2014. The goal of this NO-Code platform to make a path for anybody to have the option to make computer games without coding. This C++ platform attracts the majority of business visionaries, designers and other gaming fans without earlier game development advancements or coding information.
Blender is a free and open-source 3D graphics production suite. It is primarily suitable for making interactive real-time content. This amazing game engine is purely written in C/C++ from scratch.
Blend4Web is an open source 3D graphic software framework. The main advantage of the framework is that it works right within the browser without installing any third party plugins. It can render both graphics as well as audio inside the browser window.
Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform 3D game engine developed by Amazon Game Tech. It is based upon Crytek’s Cryengine. This AAA game engine is written in C++ and Lua. Lumberyard develops games for the PC, Mobiles and consoles i.e., Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The most prominent feature of the engine is its integration with AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Twitch. Lumberyard is designed for performance, modularity, and productivity.
Leadwerks is a cross-platform, 3D game engine developed by Leadwerks Software to make 3D video game easy to develop. It is written in C++, C-Objective and Lua. It develops games for the platform of Microsoft windows and Linux. It is a proprietary engine. On March, 2019 its first stable version was released. Until now four versions of the engine have been released.
Horde3D is small, open Source and cross platform game engine. This 3D rendering engine is written in C++. It targets the platform of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Its C-style exposed API interface allows user to use it from any language possible with less effort. It thus, offers the bindings to C#, Java, Python, Lua, Go and many other languages.
Gameplay 3D is a Cross-platform game engine used to develop 2D and 3D games. Written in C++, this is used to develop games for Windows, Android, Linux, Blackberry, iOS and MacOSX. The game engine supports Visual Studio, Xcode, CMake, Qt Creator and Android NDK platforms to develop and build the platform.
