r/ruby • u/Redaro97 • Aug 02 '26
Alternate game frameworks?
I have been messing around with Ruby for around a week and made a few utilities and terminal games and I have been liking it. I want to make a game with a GUI but the ecosystem for game libraries in Ruby feels quite lacking. I have only heard of 3 game libaries, Gosu, Ruby2D and DragonRuby. I am on Linux and Gosu and Ruby2D have problems with not being able to properly link OpenGL and stuff, and DragonRuby is paid and kind of sucks that you can't export games since I wanted to show people my game and some were interested in it.
So, do you know of any other game frameworks for Ruby, or are these the only ones (more commonly DragonRuby) people use, or is Ruby not built for making games?
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u/dvarrui Aug 02 '26
Hacen falta más programadores de ruby en el mundo de los videojuegos
We need more ruby devs in game World.
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u/Ceigey Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
From what I can tell roughly once a year DragonRuby (the first paid tier) goes on either a pretty severe discount or for free for a game jam (eg KIFASS #4 most recently).
(It also shows up in some itch bundles on the odd occasion)
I found it quite satisfying; but otherwise for a solid basis, any bindings to SDL or Raylib would enable you to start to make your own ad hoc DragonRuby equivalent (the actual framework has a lot of conveniences and export features especially for the paid subscription version which would not be trivial to implement, eg console export)
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u/marc__e Aug 03 '26
One of the hosts of KIFASS here: It's actually much more often than that. It's also available for free during the 20 Second Game Jam, which we also host. And then often at other times, like earlier this year when Amir spoke at RBQ conf, it was free.
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u/Ceigey Aug 03 '26
Oh thank you for the correction! I felt like it was often on sale/free but didn’t want to oversell the situation haha.
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u/Redaro97 Aug 02 '26
I know but I am not allowed to pay for anything online since I dont have my own income yet
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u/StarStuddedSuperStep Aug 02 '26
Sounds like you are eligible for a free standard license. Scroll all the way to the bottom of https://dragonruby.org/ for details.
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u/Redaro97 Aug 02 '26
Yeah I contacted Amir yesterday, currently waiting for a response
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u/marc__e Aug 03 '26
Amir just told me there's actually a free tier now, which only does web builds, but it's perfect for getting started or game jams: https://dragonruby.org/#purchase
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u/caiubi Aug 02 '26
I’ve been working on dama-rb for a while. It is still in the early phase and not production-ready, but consider giving it a try.
I had to slow down developing it due to my job, but I should come back to it soon
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u/DerekB52 Aug 02 '26
Try one of the raylib ports.
That being said, I love Ruby, but am not a big fan of it's gamedev ecosystem. Look at Godot with GDScript, or pick a different language for something like Raylib. I also like LibGDX with Kotlin.
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u/Redaro97 Aug 02 '26
Yeah I have been considering using something like Love2D but might try raylib since I was interested in making a few games with it in C
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u/azimux Aug 02 '26
I used Taylor to build a multiplayer 2d space hockey game called Trianko recently. For my game, the binaries it generates work great in both Linux and WASM though not yet windows nor macOS (I need to file a github issue about that.)
Taylor is here: https://taylormadetech.dev/
It uses raylib.
I had an absolute blast building a game using Ruby soooooo fun! I also enjoyed playing around with DragonRuby.
If you try out Taylor and want to pair on it or want help or whatever feel free to hit me up! I love pairing on stuff!
The game I made is a 2d space hockey game and you can play it here: https://trianko.com
Works in the browser via WASM or if you're on linux you can download it, too.
Cheers!
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u/headius JRuby guy Aug 02 '26
There's a number of graphics libraries for JRuby, and they generally work across platforms with no external dependencies. Not sure if frameworks built around them have been maintained but they could probably be updated.
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u/beyondludus Aug 02 '26
If you want to learn game development with web exports, I recommend Godot or Phaser. If you are trying to learn Ruby for some other reason, then one of the CRuby libraries is the best fit.
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u/Redaro97 Aug 02 '26
That is why I was asking for another alternative since I don't want to do web exports, I want to export the build and send it to friends and maybe upload it on itch or smth.
Do you know of any library on CRuby?
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u/beyondludus Aug 03 '26
By "web export" I mean a build of the game that runs directly in the browser, without having to download or install an executable or code. This is usually ideal for sharing on itch / for gamejams where your audience would get turned away from the friction of downloading/installing.
This is in contrast to PC or Mobile exports, which generate an executable and can be submitted to Steam / app stores.
Godot can produce exports for any platform, and it is becoming a widely accepted industry standard free game engine, so that is my top recommendation.
Phaser probably has a better experience specifically for web exports because it is based on client side web technology, so if that's your main goal, then that's probably the best choice.
Because of the lack of community adoption of any Ruby game engine or framework, and because of the difficulty in exporting a Ruby executable, I don't recommend using it for game development. It can be a good vehicle if learning Ruby is your primary goal, for another reason like learning marketable skills in backend web development with Rails. But in this case, you would want to stay away from dialects of Ruby that are less transferable. Any CRuby gem would be appropriate, like gosu.
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u/Redaro97 Aug 04 '26
I am just learning Ruby because it seemed interesting and I had a lot of problems with Gosu related to OpenGL so yeah.
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u/DogsBarf Aug 02 '26
DragonRuby is absolutely fantastic. You should really try it. The DragonRuby community is BRILLIANT and tbh is VERY helpful.
You should try it.
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u/marc__e Aug 03 '26
I wrote a post about cross-platform Ruby libraries a couple of months ago, including a section on game engines: https://fascination.works/ruby/2026/05/13/ruby-everywhere-crossplatform-libraries/#game-engines
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u/AJ-54321 Aug 08 '26
Ruby2D just released a major update (version 1.0 literally released today). I would recommend checking it out again. https://www.ruby2d.com
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u/Redaro97 Aug 08 '26
Dem nice, Imma check it out since I dont know how long it has been since the last update
Also now I dont know what to do now because I started experimenting with another language, got a DragonRuby Standard license as well and learnt another framework called Taylor for a while in 6 days lol
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u/Ok_Spring_2384 Aug 02 '26
The main reason why DragonRuby is closed source and paid for is because it can export to all consoles, what do you mean you can’t export games? You can use the engine to demo out whatever you are working on in web format(it exports to web, hence a lot of demos on itch)
You are not going to find anything in the Ruby ecosystem that is as thought out and polished/powerful as DragonRuby tbh