Ebitengine in 2023

Hajime Hoshi
2023-12-05

It has been 10 years since I started developing Ebitengine. This article is a retrospective of Ebitengine in the year 2023.

Sponsors

From December 2022 to November 2023, I have been sponsored by the following individuals (via GitHub Sponsors, Patreon, and thanks.dev). I am deeply grateful for their support.

(Listed in order of the total amount sponsored)

Contributors

From December 2022 to November 2023, the following individuals have contributed. I am deeply grateful for their contributions.

(Listed in order of the number of commits)

Ebitengine

Purego, Oto

Events

January

• At Game Off 2022, quasilyte's "Decipherism" was awarded.

March

• "Meg's Monster" was released by Odencat Inc.
• The Nintendo Switch version of "Rakuen" and the Steam version of "Mr. Saitou" were released by Morizora Studio.
• Ebitengine v2.5.0 was released, featuring limited Xbox support and new features like vector graphics.

April

• Hajime Hoshi became the CTO of Odencat Inc.

Excited to announce that I've become the CTO of Odencat from today! I'll be supporting Odencat's technical side, including game development using Ebitengine. Looking forward to this new journey! 🥳

— Hajime Hoshi (@hajimehoshi) April 14, 2023

May

• For his contributions to Ebitengine, Hajime Hoshi received the Google Open Source Peer Bonus.
• "Meg's Monster" won the first place in the Dengeki Indie Prize 2023.

June

• Ebitengine celebrated its 10th anniversary since the first commit.
• With the help of Siôn le Roux and others, the Ebitengine Game Jam 2023 was held. The theme was "Reverse".

July

• The Nintendo Switch packaged versions of "Bear's Restaurant" and "Fishing Paradise" were released in North America. These are the first packaged versions of games made with Ebitengine.
• Odencat Inc. participated in "BitSummit 2023".

August

• Ebitengine v2.6.0 was released, adding new APIs related to monitors.
• At CEDEC 2023, Daigo from Odencat Inc. gave a presentation titled "The Making of 'Meg's Monster' - Techniques for Creating Emotionally Impactful Games".

September

• With the cooperation of DeNA and volunteers, the Ebitengine Petit Conf #1 was held in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was the first offline event named after Ebitengine. A summary article by eihigh can be found here (in Japanese language).

October

• Introduced by Alex Mills, the creator of the Ebitengine game BANKWAVE, the team from Frabjous Studios and Hajime Hoshi appeared in an interview titled "The Process" conducted by Jude Brewer.

November

• At G-STAR 2023, Daigo from Odencat Inc. presented "The Making of 'Meg's Monster' - How to Craft a Heart-Stirring Indie Game".

December

• The Steam version of "Snowman Story" from Odencat is scheduled for release.

Ebitengine Creations

All image copyrights, including screenshots, belong to the application developers.

Games for Home Consoles

Meg's Monster

Rakuen

Ebitengine Game Jam Games

The Ebitengine Game Jam 2023 was held in June. Here we feature the TOP 4 games from the final results. For other games, please refer to the jam entries.

Other Games and Applications

Among the games and applications made with Ebitengine this year, we introduce those listed on stores like Steam and others that made a lasting impression. We are thankful for all the creations made with Ebitengine!

Libraries

• asebiten (Author: Frabjous Studios) - Load exported Aseprite animations and use them in Ebitengine games.
• Aseprite image loader (Author: askeladdk) - Package aseprite implements a decoder for Aseprite sprite files (.ase and .aseprite files).
• ebitengine-input (Author: quasilyte) - A Godot-inspired action input handling system for Ebitengine.
• Ingenten (Author: Frabjous Studios) - A dead-simple pixel font library in Go, written for compatibility with Ebitengine.
• nanoda (Author: Chan Aethiopicus) - nanodaはVOICEVOX COREの動的ライブラリをGolangから叩くためのライブラリです。cgoではなくebitengine/puregoを利用しているため、簡単に使用することが可能です。
• wasmplay (Author: eihigh) - This is a template repository for publishing games developed with Go and Ebitengine as a browser game on the Internet for free. Your game will run on both Desktop and Browser with just one command!

Articles

• Building Snake Game In Golang: Complete Guide (Author: Kuldeep Singh)
• ebitengineでゲームを作る (Author: 株式会社リベル・エンタテインメント)
• Fixing a Memory Corruption Bug in Go (Author: TotallyGamerJet)
• Game development in Go: Ebitengine shaders (Author: quasilyte)
• Go製ゲームエンジンEbitengine入門: Boids Flockingを実装する (Author: BioErrorLog)
• Introduction to Kage (Author: tinne26)
• Making a Text Editor with a Game Engine (Author: Andrew Healey)
• Making Games in Go for Absolute Beginners (Author: Miłosz Smółka)
• Zero alloc pathfinding in Go (Author: quasilyte)
• Разработка игр на Go: шейдеры (Author: quasilyte)

Videos

Ebitengine Game Development 9/20/23

Author: SolarLune

Futuristic Digital Network Lines animation

Author: Kryffon

Go gamedev patterns

Author: quasilyte

(gosu) Paitan - LEMON SUMMER [4K NOVICE]

Author: Muang

Interview with Nadim

Author: Nadim Kobeissi (Symbolic Software), eihigh

PixelMek 3D pre-alpha, now with 100% more destruction effects!

Author: Mechteric

New Release Trailers

Dream Channel Zero

• Steam
• Developer: Fuming
• Publisher: Odencat Inc.

SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim

• Steam
• Developer: SAFE HAVN STUDIO
• Publisher: HYPRE REAL

BANKWAVE: Neon Networth

• Steam
• Publisher: Frabjous Studios

Inside The Crystal Mountain

• Steam
• Publisher: Intrugli Games

Ebitengine Beyond 2024

This year, Ebitengine celebrated its 10th anniversary, and it has matured significantly as a 2D game engine. It's been used in various works, and I am truly grateful to everyone for their support. Surprisingly, even though Ebitengine is intended for 2D games, some people have created 3D games with it, which is quite astonishing. Setting that aside, I believe the next necessary step is to add features for creating GUIs. We are enhancing detailed functionalities like IME input and complex text rendering. With these improvements, it should become possible to create simple editors, making game development in Go even more efficient. Stay tuned!

In the coming year and beyond, Ebitengine games such as "Inside The Crystal Mountain", "SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim", "Dream Channel Zero", and "BANKWAVE: Neon Networth" are scheduled to be released. As the creator of Ebitengine, I am very much looking forward to these releases.

Wishing everyone a happy new year!