Free JavaScript Game Frameworks To Create A Web-Based Fun
As JavaScript-HTML5 development is getting more popular and browsers supporting new features are being utilized by more users everyday, -as expected- many new games are being developed with JavaScript.
JavaScript-powered games are not only easier-to-develop for web developers but they are also the only cross-platform ones including desktop, web and mobile.
Previously, WRD had shared 25 Amazing JavaScript Games (Some Fun And Inspiration) and, today, here is a list of free JavaScript game frameworks to build a new one:
The Render Engine
A cross-browser engine which is very flexible and comes with an extensive API.
It uses object-pooling to reduce garbage collection.
Abstraction around the Canvas DOM element and any DOM element exists to standardize access to the capabilities of 2D rendering.
Box2d is the physics engine integrated, has support for touch inputs and much more.
LimeJS
It is a HTML5 game framework for building games that'll feel native and work fast in modern touchscreens and desktop browsers.
LimeJS is created with Closure Library built by Google and comes with functions/classes to control the timeline, events, shapes and animations.
Also, the framework has full support of sprite sheets (you can collect all images inside a single file).
Jaws
A 2D game library powered by HTML5 which supports canvas and ordinary DOM based sprites through the same API.
It has a satisfactory sprite constructor for a higher abstraction for the characters.
Jaws makes handling keystrokes easier, providing string-identifiers for each key and anywhere in the code, you can instantly check if a key is pressed down.
GMP
GMP is a JavaScript game engine that fits good to creating sprite-based, 2-D games and it can easily power most retro-style arcade game designs or puzzles like Sudoku.
It has a ready-to-go, self-booting game loop. Mouse and keyboard inputs can be used easily.
The engine is well-documented and the major fallback can be the lack of integrated sound support.
Gamma
This JavaScript library can be used to create 2.5D platform games with the power of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and WebGL.
It comes with various classes to ease the development process including the ones for shapes, characters, enemies and more.
Akihabara
It is a set of libraries, tools and presets to create pixelated indie-style 8/16-bit era games in Javascript using HTML5 canvas tag and some standard hooks.
The modules provided include:
- Gamebox: helps with collisions, rendering + moving objects, keyboard, double buffering and FSE.
- Gamecycle: features like intro, menus, crossfading between stages/lifes, gameover and ending.
- Toys: lots of common routines like jumping characters, bullets, etc.
- Iphopad / Iphofretboard: for touch-based devices.
gameQuery
A jQuery plug-in which helps building JavaScript games with the help game-related classes offered.
It features multi-layer sprite animations (with hierarchy support), collision detection, sound, keyboard state polling and periodic callbacks.
Propulsion
Propulsion supports any type of two dimensional game development.
There are many built-in shapes to be drawn and a physics engine for managing accelerations and velocity.
Crafty
This is a lightweight and modular JavaScript game engine which consists of many components like animation, event management, redraw regions, collision detection, sprites and more.
jsGameSoup
The library comes with cross-browser event handling (mouse, keyboard and touch).
It has polygon, box and circle collision detection, sprite management and networking (ajax) abstraction layer.
GameJs
GameJs is a lightweight library, which is actually a port of the popular PyGame to JavaScript, that uses HTML canvas element.
It is a simple framework that allows writing the games as CommonJs modules.
xc.js
It is a very fresh framework and not as mature as others in the list.
At the core of xc.js, the concepts are scenes, nodes, actions, and events.
Sound support, Box2d and networking are the features to be mentioned in the "to-do-list" of the framework.
Other -related- resources
- Simple Game Framework (simpler JS game framework)
- Diggy (JS game engine)
- friGame (jQuery powered game engine)
- Raphaël (JS library for vector graphics)
- C3DL (JS library for 3D canvas)
- GLGE (JS WebGL library)
- PhiloGL (JS WebGL framework)
- SoundManager (JavaScript sound API)
- jPlayer (HTML5 audio and video for jQuery)
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