Best Game Engines for Lua
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Compare the Top Game Engines that integrate with Lua as of September 2025
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This a list of Game Engines that integrate with Lua. Use the filters on the left to add additional filters for products that have integrations with Lua. View the products that work with Lua in the table below.
What are Game Engines for Lua?
A game engine is a software framework designed to facilitate the development of video games by providing essential tools and functionalities. It typically includes a rendering engine for graphics, a physics engine for realistic object interactions, and scripting capabilities for game logic. Many game engines also offer asset management, animation tools, networking support, and AI systems to streamline development. Popular engines like Unity and Unreal Engine enable developers to create games across multiple platforms with minimal additional coding. By handling complex technical aspects, game engines allow creators to focus on designing immersive gameplay experiences. Compare and read user reviews of the best Game Engines for Lua currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
LÖVE
Love2D
As you probably know by now, LÖVE is a framework for making 2D games in the Lua programming language. LÖVE is totally free, and can be used in anything from friendly open-source hobby projects, to evil, closed-source commercial ones. To make a minimal game, create a folder anywhere, and open up your favorite text editor. Sublime Text is a pretty good one for all operating systems, and it has Lua support built in. Create a new file in the folder you just created, and name it main.lua. Put the following code in the file, and save it.Starting Price: Free -
2
Nakama
Heroic Labs
Nakama is an open source game server framework developed by Heroic Labs, designed to facilitate the creation of real-time, multiplayer, and social games across various platforms, including Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, and more. It provides a comprehensive suite of features such as real-time multiplayer capabilities, customizable matchmaking algorithms, leaderboards, in-game chat, and support for in-game currencies. Developers can extend Nakama's functionality using server-side logic written in Go, TypeScript, or Lua, allowing for authoritative game mechanics and enhanced control over game state. The platform also offers open-source client libraries tailored for different game engines and languages, ensuring seamless integration and flexibility in game development. Nakama is your dedicated server, not another multi-tenant SaaS. Add custom features and secure authoritative gameplay logic directly to your game server.Starting Price: Free -
3
Defold
Defold
Defold is a free and open source game engine designed for high-performance cross-platform game development. It comes fully featured out of the box, requiring no setup or configuration, allowing developers to simply download the editor and start creating. The engine includes a visual editor, code editor, Lua scripting, Lua debugger, scene editor, particle editor, and tilemap editor, and supports both 2D and 3D game development. With a single codebase and no need for external tools, Defold enables publishing to major platforms such as PlayStation5, PlayStation4, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, Windows, Steam, HTML5, and Facebook. It offers a component-based system for building games, allowing the use of basic building blocks to create complex behavior, and supports writing game logic using Lua. Developers can add new functionality from the asset portal, set up their own local build environment, and write native code to extend the engine.Starting Price: Free -
4
Gideros
Gideros
Gideros is a free and open-source cross-platform game development framework that enables developers to create high-performance 2D games using the Lua programming language. It offers instant testing on real devices through Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for lengthy export or deployment processes. Built on C/C++ and OpenGL, Gideros ensures that games run at native speed, fully utilizing the power of CPUs and GPUs. The framework supports easy extension through plugins, allowing developers to import existing code in C, C++, Java, or Objective-C and bind it to Lua. Gideros provides its own class system with standard object-oriented programming practices, enabling clean and reusable code. The comprehensive development environment includes a lightweight IDE, players for desktops and devices, a texture packer, and a font creator. Gideros supports multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and HTML5.Starting Price: Free -
5
Solar2D
Solar2D
Solar2D is a Lua-based game engine focused on ease of iterations and usage. As a fully open-source project forked from the well-established and widely used Corona SDK game engine, Solar2D allows developers to create applications for mobile, desktop, and connected TV devices with a single codebase, supporting platforms such as iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, macOS, Windows, Linux, and HTML5. The engine features an instant-update simulator, enabling developers to see code changes in real time, and supports live builds for rapid testing on real devices over a local network. A vast array of plugins is available to extend the core functionality, covering aspects like in-app advertising, analytics, and media. For additional customization, developers can call any native (C/C++/Obj-C/Java) library or API using Solar2D Native. Built on the lightweight and fast Lua scripting language, Solar2D is completely free to use, with no hidden fees, charges, or royalties.Starting Price: Free -
6
Cocos2d-x
Cocos
Cocos2d-x is an open source, flexible, and lightweight cross-platform game engine that has been providing developers with stable and mature solutions since 2011. The engine offers interfaces in C++, Lua, and JavaScript, supporting platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and HTML5 browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Built upon OpenGL ES 2.0 and Metal for graphics rendering, Cocos2d-x fully exploits the GPU performance of mobile devices while maintaining compatibility. Developers can utilize Lua or JavaScript scripting languages to perform hot updates to games, eliminating the need to send packages to app stores and wait for review. The engine's open-source capabilities allow for extensive customization, enabling game companies to develop their own game types and extensions, including combining their own 3D engines to solve 2D interface and UI problems. According to test data, Cocos2d-x version 3.x is compatible with 99.7% of Android devices in China.Starting Price: Free -
7
Cocos Creator
Cocos
Cocos Creator is an efficient, lightweight, open source, cross-platform graphics engine and real-time interactive 2D and 3D digital content creation platform. It is not only flawless for 2D and 3D game development, but also provides integral solutions for automotive, XR, Metaverse, and education. The engine offers high performance, low power consumption, streaming loading, and cross-platform publishing capabilities. Cocos Creator features an all-in-one editor designed for artists, game planners, and developers, a powerful plug-in system for free expansion, a smooth animation editor, and an easy-to-use and easy-to-debug TypeScript scripting language. It supports full coverage of various platforms, providing friendly and professional tools to create virtual worlds. The platform also offers solutions for virtual character creation, industrial simulation, interactive marketing, XR content creation, gaming, and smart digital cockpits.
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