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Recomendations for light web-based game creation software?

A topic by plirof created Mar 19, 2025 Views: 257 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 4

Hello,

I have tried Pocket Platformer, Bitsy (and clones), VRItsy and some other game creation software that can run on a browser. They are all good but I'm looking for more alternatives.

Can you recommend  any other web-based game design software? 

-It must run on browser

-It should be written in HTML/JS/PHP so it can be hosted on an apache server (will be used in a LAN computer lab).

-it must not be heavy (eg Godot ,GDevelop are not light programs).

Thanks in advance :)

(I've already searched tags Game design and Game engine and did not find much)

Moderator

There's Twine, of course, but it doesn't look like the browser-based version can be downloaded and self-hosted.

(+1)

It probably depends what you mean by "light". Do you consider GDevelop not light enough because it's too complicated and difficult to use, or because it's an entire IDE, not just an engine/framework?

If it's the former, you're going to struggle, because that (and similar engines such as Ct.js, Construct 3, Clickteam Fusion 2.5 etc) are about as simple and user-friendly as you can possibly get (certainly without sacrificing a lot of versatility).
Otherwise, you are going to be restricted to extremely simple "engines" like Bitsy, Puzzlescript, Twine, etc - but I'd hesitate to even call those game creation tools, because (as you've probably discovered by now) they're so limiting in terms of the types of games that you can make with them, that it's almost more like re-skinning / modding an existing game than creating your own.
Pico-8 is obviously very popular, but again, it's both less user-friendly (requiring actual coding) and less versatile than engines like GDevelop / Construct - but the IDE is much lighter, if that's what you care about.

(1 edit)

When I say light I mean software like  https://the-l0bster.itch.io/pocket-platformer , https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy  and https://jukel.itch.io/vritsy

I don't want to make a proffesional looking game. I want something simple and usable by young kids. Also, the machines that I want to run it are usually core2duo PCs (that's why I want light software).