Note: This is a guest post written by Dan Martin
Mobile gaming is an entertaining way to pass the time and enjoy the fun with friends and family. With more people using smartphones and tablets than ever before, mobile games have become a popular form of entertainment.
Mobile gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas in the gaming industry. In 2026, the global mobile gaming market will hit $420,386 billion, generating $103.5 billion in revenues in 2022. With such a high demand for mobile games, it’s no surprise that there are more than 3 billion active mobile gamers globally.
Mobile games are popular among gamers who want to play on the go. They’re easy to download, install and play on any device — from an Android phone to your iPhone, iPad, or even your laptop computer.
Smartphone users increasingly use their phones and iPads for entertainment, news, shopping, or online gambling. With this growth, mobile game engines and platforms are crucial in the mobile gaming industry. Game engines facilitate mobile game development using the required resources and software.
This guide will cover the top 8 mobile game engines and platforms and what they offer, providing crucial tech tips to help you make your next mobile game.
[1] Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine is an advanced, cutting-edge game engine that supports various platforms, including PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile devices. Developers can create games and applications with the game engine without special coding skills. Unreal Engine has special tools and features to help you make fantastic games.
Unreal enables developers to create AAA games for PCs, PlayStation, Xbox, VR/AR, iOS, and Android. The game platform makes game development easy, especially for new game developers. It’s ideal for developers without coding skills and 3D games.
[2] Buildbox Game Engine
Buildbox is a free cross-platform game engine written in Java that allows users to build their games from scratch or customize existing ones. Buildbox provides tools for creating 2D and 3D games for platforms like Android and iOS devices. Buildbox also comes with expert community support, making it easy to share ideas and collaborate with other developers on your project!
Developers without coding skills can use Buildbox to create their game assets (characters, environment, etc.), import them into Buildbox, and then export them as composite objects for use in other projects. Buildbox also offers a drag-and-drop editor that lets users easily change their games’ graphics or other assets. The engine has reusable components for games such as physics simulation, collision detection, pathfinding, and more.
[3] Unity Tech Tips
Unity is one of the most popular engines among developers because it supports multiple platforms like iOS and Android as well as PCs. Unity is an advanced cross-platform game engine (with support for mobile platforms), development environment, and editor that allows you to develop games across multiple operating systems. Unity supports the creation of 2D, 3D, VR, and AR experiences across all major operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and iOS/Android devices.
Unity is an easy-to-use tool with a real-time preview that allows users to create games easily. Tech samaritan offers exciting learning modules for creating exciting video effects and animations that can take your creativity to the next level. With Unity, you can create games — from 2D side-scrolling platformers to 3D first-person shooters — in almost any imaginable genre. It’s the most popular game engine, with over 50% of all games built on Unity.
[4] Solar2D Open Source Game Engine
Solar2D is an open-source 2D game engine. The Lua-based, Solar2D engine features 2D graphics, physics, and lighting for mobile apps. Solar2D is a game engine that allows developers to create 2D games with drag-and-drop editor tech tips. It’s a popular choice among mobile game developers because it’s free and easy to learn. It allows users to build games quickly without worrying about complicated code or the technical side of development.
Solar2D has been used to create games like Match 3 Space RPG, Flappy Bird, and Corona Cannon. The main features include low-level OpenGL 3 support, multi-core support, an interactive website, built-in physics, animation, audio APIs, scene graphs, tilemaps, and more.
[5] GameMaker Studio 2
Source: Pexels
GameMaker Studio 2, by YoYo Games, is a game creation tool that allows you to create 2D games with ease. It comes with an engine, scripting language, and more than 1,000 ready-to-use assets, including sound effects and music. It supports the creation of cross-platform game development using the Game Maker Language for the ever-changing gaming industry.
It is free to download, but there are fees associated with in-app purchases (IAPs). The game engine offers tech tips to novices to create games for all devices, including Windows, macOS, Xbox, PlayStation, iOS, Android, and HTML5 platforms. It has a tutorial for beginners.
It comes with over 100 ready-made assets and tools, making it easy for developers to get started quickly without spending hours learning how to create scripts or code their games from scratch. GameMaker Studio 2 was the first game engine to introduce drag-and-drop functionality to mobile development. Developers can create games quickly and easily. It also has a built-in visual editor and network management support for amazing games.
[6] AppGameKit
AppGameKit is another free game engine that can be used by anyone who wants to make 2D games for iOS devices, Windows 8, or even Linux devices! The tool allows you to add touch controls and user interaction features, such as buttons and menus, and draw backgrounds, characters, and other assets in real time using your mouse cursor.
AppGameKit is an open-source framework built on OpenGL ES 2.0 that allows developers to build cross-platform applications without having to write any code themselves! The only downside is that it has no built-in features like Game Maker, so if you’re looking for something more advanced than what AppGameKit provides, look elsewhere!
[7] SpriteKit Game Engine for iOS Devices
SpriteKit is Apple’s 2D game framework for creating iPhone games using the SpriteKit framework. It comes with a bunch of tools for creating animations and particle effects and a library of pre-made assets that you can import into your game. SpriteKit also includes support for iCloud integration.
SpriteKit framework provides a strong foundation for game developers to build beautiful games fast without worrying about graphics rendering or memory management. It is efficient in terms of memory usage while allowing developers to create high-quality graphical effects using various features provided by Apple’s GPU technology, like extensive use of shaders and global illumination lighting.
[8] MonoGame
Source: Pexels
MonoGame is a cross-platform game engine created by the XNA team at Microsoft. The game engine supports C# and .NET languages. It allows developers to create high-performance games for all platforms, from mobile devices to consoles. MonoGame supports games on Nintendo Switch, Windows, Playstation 4 & PSVita, Xbox One, iOS, macOS, Linux, and Android.
The engine is designed to be used by beginners and experts alike. MonoGame’s development environment makes it easy for anyone to create games without learning complex programming languages. It supports many popular mobile platforms like iOS and Android and web browsers. This is a great option for indie developers who want to release their games on multiple platforms without having to code separately for each one.
Final Thoughts
Are you a mobile game developer? If you answer yes, you should know that several different platforms and engines can help make your games more interactive and immersive. With these top game engines, you can use the tech tips they offer, features, and in-built plugins to make your app or game.
You can also find many online resources to help you choose the best gaming engine for your project. If you need to know which is best for your needs, try each platform until you find one that fits your needs perfectly.
Top mobile game engines offer a wide range of templates to help developers get started quickly without worrying about code or art assets. These game engines are ideal for making high-quality games that run on Android, iOS, and other platforms. Some engines are also integrated with other popular tools like Facebook Ads Manager and Google Analytics, so developers can easily track their app’s performance with minimal effort.