iOS App Development

5 Best Game Engines to Create Apps for iOS

Creating games for the appstore in objective-c can be very complicated. If you learn some of these useful tools/engines you will soon be creating games in no time.


Unity

Price – $400/£255 (Royalty Free)
https://store.unity3d.com/

Unity is an amazing game engine, which is designed for 2D and 3D games. The engine is very easy to pickup for beginners and experts. The engine is very powerful, letting you create rich games with very little effort.

The best part about unity is you can release for a wide selection of platforms, in one mouse click. You can build your game in the editor. Once it’s ready to be shipped simply press build and you can select to build for iOS, Android, Flash, Browser, Pc & Mac.


Unreal Development Kit

Price – Free ($99 for Commercial + Royalties)
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/

Unreal Engine is a very graphical engine. The engine is used on many games such as Mirrors Edge, Batman and Mass Effect.

The engine is more tailored to intermediate/advanced developers as it’s complicated to create games. The engine features a lot of features and you can create almost any game you want.


Corona SDK

Price – $200/£127 (Royalty Free)
http://www.coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

Corona SDK is a tool which allows you to create 2D apps. I originally started out using the sdk and I created many apps with the tool.

The SDK is normally used by beginners but is starting to get used by bigger companies to create games quickly.


Cocos 2D

Price – Free (Royalty Free)
http://c3dt.sourceforge.net/

Cocos 2D can be used natively with objective-c (xcode). The library helps you create 2d games quickly and saves you a lot of time coding engine specific features.

The SDK is widely used with over 2,500 apps being created using the tool. The app is slightly harder to use then Corona SDK but it is more flexible in the long run.


Torque Engine

Price – $149/£95 (Royalty Free)
http://www.garagegames.com/

Torque engine is an old engine but has recently been bought. The engine currently supports 2D apps and 3D may be coming at a later date.

The engine is quiet simple to use but has limited documentation. The price is quiet low and they offer excellent support for developers.

About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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