Game Engines
5 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars — scroll down for our analysis.
| Tool | Stars | Velocity | Language | License | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Godot Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine | 108.4k | — | C++ | MIT License | 82 |
 Bevy Data-driven game engine built in Rust | 45.3k | — | Rust | Apache License 2.0 | 79 |
| 21.6k | — | JavaScript | — | 65 | |
| 9.5k | — | C++ | — | 63 | |
| 1.1k | — | Pascal | — | 45 |
Our Analysis
Godot is the indie game dev power move. MIT-licensed, 120MB editor, zero runtime fees, zero revenue sharing, zero forced splash screens. After Unity's pricing debacle, developers flooded to Godot — and the engine earned it. For 2D games, it's arguably the best engine available, period. Unity still wins for 3D and console targets with its massive asset store and mature ecosystem. Unreal dominates AAA visuals. But if you're making a platformer, roguelike, RPG, or visual novel, Godot's 2D pipeline is faster to work with and GDScript's Python-like syntax has far less boilerplate than C#. Use Godot if you're a solo dev or small team building 2D or lightweight 3D games. The MIT license means nobody can pull a Unity on you — ever. The catch: 3D is improving but still trails Unity and Unreal significantly. The plugin ecosystem is smaller. And finding Godot-experienced contractors is harder than finding Unity devs. For console publishing, you'll need third-party tools since Godot doesn't ship proprietary console SDKs directly.
Bevy is a data-driven game engine written in Rust with an ECS architecture that makes Rust's ownership model feel natural for game dev. Systems are just functions, queries are type-safe, and hot reloading means fast iteration. 45k stars and the most popular Rust game engine — if you want memory safety without garbage collection pauses, this is it. Godot is the practical indie choice — MIT licensed, mature editor, GDScript is easier to learn, and it ships actual commercial games. Unity has the ecosystem and console support. Macroquad is Rust's minimalist alternative for 2D prototyping. Use Bevy if you're a Rust developer who wants to make games without leaving your language. Its 2D rendering is genuinely faster than Godot's, and the ECS paradigm scales beautifully. The catch: Bevy is pre-1.0 (v0.18) and the API changes between versions. There's no visual editor — everything is code. The learning curve combines Rust's borrow checker with ECS concepts, which is steep for newcomers. Very few shipped commercial games use Bevy yet. If you want to finish and ship a game soon, Godot is the pragmatic choice. Bevy is for developers who value the engine's architecture over time-to-market.