One of the biggest recent indie hits, Balatro, was made in Löve!
I really like it, the developer experience is so smooth for beginners, just drag a zip onto the exe and it starts. And the APIs are simple enough to memorize while allowing pretty cool rendering stuff.
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nebula8804
Anyone who is a fan of the TV Show Community MUST try out the recreation of the 8 bit video game episode(Digital Estate Planning) called Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne.
This engine has really come a long way and enabled such a memorable game for me.
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wwarren
I love LÖVE. For me it sits at the perfect intersection between high and low level abstraction. Unfortunately the latest released version is getting pretty long in the tooth now and a lot of devs use the latest HEAD from the repo since it has better performance and compatibility. One day the mythical 12.0 will get released for real…..
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delduca
If you liked Love2D, please take a look at Carimbo (my engine).
I used LÖVE to build a simple Kodi alternative for my home media center setup. My first attempt was using Electron but rewriting to LÖVE meant much simpler code (turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS) and less resource consumption (not a high bar, yes). It works so well I might clean it up and open source it...
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PacificSpecific
I generally very much dislike dynamic languages but for some reason I've always really liked Lua. I'm not exactly sure why to be honest.
Maybe because you can fit the whole language spec on a single sheet of paper and adding more advanced features is pretty easy.
Love looks really cool. I never got into it personally but I still might
Yeah this is amazing. I'd love to see integration with raylib at some point, if possible that is.
Lua's small footprint is it's one big advantage in addition to its pleasent syntax but with tiny cc (which raylib supports when I last checked a few years ago) you can get a compact c runtime as well.
I haven't worked on a project with either of these frameworks but a couple of years back I was researching into some frameworks and was surprised to learn that I can use raylib on my phone with termux!
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JSR_FDED
Lua is very fast - even without the JIT it makes Python feel like wading through molasses.
Lua is so small and simple (but not simplistic) that you can keep it completely in your head. Even if you only get to work on your project once every weekend you won’t have to relearn half of it every time.
0xCAP
My2c. Fintech tech lead who has only a far memory of hand coding games ages ago. Community makes tech awesome. Love2D discord changed my life. Never met a more awesome and welcoming community in my whole life.
raincole
Btw, Love2D is based on SDL2. If you hate Lua but needs the same cross-platform capabilities, you can use an SDL2 binding in other languages or make your own.
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vanderZwan
If, like me, you have too much "P5 api" muscle memory to really get into LÖVE (not a criticism of that library, tbc), then L5 might be a nice alternative:
I love löve I did some projects in it, lua was one of my fist programming language, i think it's a great fit for game dev.
Also move or die is running on love2d, which is an awesome game.
Also I love that trick that you can just zip your files and binary Comcast them to the love2d binary and it will load it.
user____name
Someone should make a framework like this but with static typing and manual memory management. If you want a modable game you really need to have it in a managed language, and I spent enough time fighting with garbage collectors that it's just a non-starter. A shame because Love is really nice to use.
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mghackerlady
It also happens to be one of the better ways to do a GUI in Lua :P
nout
Am I really the first one to mention pico8 in this thread? Anyway, pico8 is another option that has a bit different spin, but you also implement the games in Lua :)
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yboris
I ported my favorite pre-2000 game into LÖVE -- was easy and fun
Gravity Wars - turn based artillery game in space (planets' gravity affect shot path)
I’m a big fan of Love2D as well. it’s simple, efficient, and really easy to get productive with. After just a short learning period, I was able to ship my first indie game on Steam, a small Chinese‑character puzzle game built entirely with Love2D. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4218330/WordJoy/
Was going to post a link to the minimal template for setting up Löve2D with Fennel, that I can really recommend, and found this recent article describing that...
As someone that used to write 2D games with things like phaserjs, sdl and even directx7, I always regret I never tried Löve2d. I think Android and iOS packaging was also supported. Is this still the case? What if one wants to integrate IAP?
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rwbt
I use this framework to build prototype applications and it's always a delight. Something about Lua just feels right. Once I'm satisfied with a demo or prototype, I later on port it to native C/C++ implementation.
chadpaulson
I love this framework, pun intended. I made a clone of Atari's Missile Command with it many years ago when the Portal / Mario mashup game made with LÖVE was popular. https://github.com/chadpaulson/missile-command
marcomezzavilla
LÖVE seems amazing, I’ve always looked at it with curiosity. There’s also the legendary Harvard CS50’s Introduction to 2D Game Development, which now uses it in its latest version.
But I’m wondering: why do mature tools like this sometimes end up on Hacker News’ front page without any particular news (like new releases or updates)? It’s just a curiosity, not a critique.
Duplicake
Interesting this is at the top of hacker news since this is pretty old, great project though
shooshx
Could have compiled it to wasm and have an online demo
herczegzsolt
I've used this for many projects that are still working to this day.
That said, i'm not impressed. A web-based solution is usually better performing, despite all the bloatware necessary. This says a lot about the state of software development unfortunately.
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alprado50
Is Love2D a decent option for gamedev compared to Godot? I finished a really simple game using Unity3D and it was fun, but it sucks to use a closed source engine.
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miellaby
Still think Gideros SDK had more potential
flykespice
I wish lua would be more popular outside of its scripting language bubble, but its tendency to occasionally introduce breaking changes every release doesn't makes it very palatable as a main language for writting software.
pmarreck
I need something like this but for cross platform utilities
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nodesocket
Interesting. I started playing with Godot this weekend and got something simple to render with some toolbar windows and a statusbar. I’ve always been fascinated by game and graphics programming.
anthk
UXN can be interesting for 2D games too.
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VorpalWay
How is it supposed to be pronounced? Is it just gratuitous diacritics? Or should I pronounce it in my native Swedish (where the names makes me think of leaves rather than love)?
(Throwing diacritics on English words look extremely silly to me, since I know how åäö are supposed to be pronounced. It makes something like Motorhead just sound laughable rather than metal.)
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sylware
bluerevolver amazing shmup made with löve.
löve is getting a vulkan backend. I would have prefered löve to be plain and simple C coded instead of this abomination which is c++ (but it seems coding AIs may be very good at assisting mass c++ to plain and simple C port).
SilentM68
Interesting framework :)
davidkunz
I haven't tried Löve, but I somehow enjoyed reading through the README.md, no AI slop, just a natural writing style with tiny indictors showing the authors' enthusiasm in creating software.
One of the biggest recent indie hits, Balatro, was made in Löve!
I really like it, the developer experience is so smooth for beginners, just drag a zip onto the exe and it starts. And the APIs are simple enough to memorize while allowing pretty cool rendering stuff.
Anyone who is a fan of the TV Show Community MUST try out the recreation of the 8 bit video game episode(Digital Estate Planning) called Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne.
[1]: https://projecthawkthorne.com/
It is now available to play straight in the browser(I guess using LÖVE Web Builder?).
[1]:https://schellingb.github.io/LoveWebBuilder/
This engine has really come a long way and enabled such a memorable game for me.
I love LÖVE. For me it sits at the perfect intersection between high and low level abstraction. Unfortunately the latest released version is getting pretty long in the tooth now and a lot of devs use the latest HEAD from the repo since it has better performance and compatibility. One day the mythical 12.0 will get released for real…..
If you liked Love2D, please take a look at Carimbo (my engine).
https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo
I have a game on Steam made with it, the game is open-source now.
https://github.com/willtobyte/reprobate
I used LÖVE to build a simple Kodi alternative for my home media center setup. My first attempt was using Electron but rewriting to LÖVE meant much simpler code (turns out manually calculating coordinates is simpler than fighting CSS) and less resource consumption (not a high bar, yes). It works so well I might clean it up and open source it...
I generally very much dislike dynamic languages but for some reason I've always really liked Lua. I'm not exactly sure why to be honest.
Maybe because you can fit the whole language spec on a single sheet of paper and adding more advanced features is pretty easy.
Love looks really cool. I never got into it personally but I still might
my favorite game in love: mario, with portals
https://stabyourself.net/mari0/
Yeah this is amazing. I'd love to see integration with raylib at some point, if possible that is.
Lua's small footprint is it's one big advantage in addition to its pleasent syntax but with tiny cc (which raylib supports when I last checked a few years ago) you can get a compact c runtime as well.
I haven't worked on a project with either of these frameworks but a couple of years back I was researching into some frameworks and was surprised to learn that I can use raylib on my phone with termux!
Lua is very fast - even without the JIT it makes Python feel like wading through molasses.
Lua is so small and simple (but not simplistic) that you can keep it completely in your head. Even if you only get to work on your project once every weekend you won’t have to relearn half of it every time.
My2c. Fintech tech lead who has only a far memory of hand coding games ages ago. Community makes tech awesome. Love2D discord changed my life. Never met a more awesome and welcoming community in my whole life.
Btw, Love2D is based on SDL2. If you hate Lua but needs the same cross-platform capabilities, you can use an SDL2 binding in other languages or make your own.
If, like me, you have too much "P5 api" muscle memory to really get into LÖVE (not a criticism of that library, tbc), then L5 might be a nice alternative:
https://l5lua.org/l5-for-processingp5/
I love löve I did some projects in it, lua was one of my fist programming language, i think it's a great fit for game dev.
Also move or die is running on love2d, which is an awesome game.
Also I love that trick that you can just zip your files and binary Comcast them to the love2d binary and it will load it.
Someone should make a framework like this but with static typing and manual memory management. If you want a modable game you really need to have it in a managed language, and I spent enough time fighting with garbage collectors that it's just a non-starter. A shame because Love is really nice to use.
It also happens to be one of the better ways to do a GUI in Lua :P
Am I really the first one to mention pico8 in this thread? Anyway, pico8 is another option that has a bit different spin, but you also implement the games in Lua :)
I ported my favorite pre-2000 game into LÖVE -- was easy and fun
Gravity Wars - turn based artillery game in space (planets' gravity affect shot path)
https://github.com/whyboris/gravity-wars
I’m a big fan of Love2D as well. it’s simple, efficient, and really easy to get productive with. After just a short learning period, I was able to ship my first indie game on Steam, a small Chinese‑character puzzle game built entirely with Love2D. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4218330/WordJoy/
Fennel is really cool! And you can write games in it :) https://fennel-lang.org/
Was going to post a link to the minimal template for setting up Löve2D with Fennel, that I can really recommend, and found this recent article describing that...
https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2026/topic/6082771/how-to-get...
... posted in the site of the 2026 Löve2D Game Jam, that sounds like something also worth mentioning: https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2026
Too late to enter. Jam was last month. But there are 47 games to check out there, plus many from previous years.
The website might have been better, in the submission https://love2d.org
For anyone looking to code LÖVE2D games directly on an iOS device, I’ve created an app called love2d-studio: https://marknoteapp.com/love2d-studio
As someone that used to write 2D games with things like phaserjs, sdl and even directx7, I always regret I never tried Löve2d. I think Android and iOS packaging was also supported. Is this still the case? What if one wants to integrate IAP?
I use this framework to build prototype applications and it's always a delight. Something about Lua just feels right. Once I'm satisfied with a demo or prototype, I later on port it to native C/C++ implementation.
I love this framework, pun intended. I made a clone of Atari's Missile Command with it many years ago when the Portal / Mario mashup game made with LÖVE was popular. https://github.com/chadpaulson/missile-command
LÖVE seems amazing, I’ve always looked at it with curiosity. There’s also the legendary Harvard CS50’s Introduction to 2D Game Development, which now uses it in its latest version.
But I’m wondering: why do mature tools like this sometimes end up on Hacker News’ front page without any particular news (like new releases or updates)? It’s just a curiosity, not a critique.
Interesting this is at the top of hacker news since this is pretty old, great project though
Could have compiled it to wasm and have an online demo
I've used this for many projects that are still working to this day.
That said, i'm not impressed. A web-based solution is usually better performing, despite all the bloatware necessary. This says a lot about the state of software development unfortunately.
Is Love2D a decent option for gamedev compared to Godot? I finished a really simple game using Unity3D and it was fun, but it sucks to use a closed source engine.
Still think Gideros SDK had more potential
I wish lua would be more popular outside of its scripting language bubble, but its tendency to occasionally introduce breaking changes every release doesn't makes it very palatable as a main language for writting software.
I need something like this but for cross platform utilities
Interesting. I started playing with Godot this weekend and got something simple to render with some toolbar windows and a statusbar. I’ve always been fascinated by game and graphics programming.
UXN can be interesting for 2D games too.
How is it supposed to be pronounced? Is it just gratuitous diacritics? Or should I pronounce it in my native Swedish (where the names makes me think of leaves rather than love)?
(Throwing diacritics on English words look extremely silly to me, since I know how åäö are supposed to be pronounced. It makes something like Motorhead just sound laughable rather than metal.)
bluerevolver amazing shmup made with löve.
löve is getting a vulkan backend. I would have prefered löve to be plain and simple C coded instead of this abomination which is c++ (but it seems coding AIs may be very good at assisting mass c++ to plain and simple C port).
Interesting framework :)
I haven't tried Löve, but I somehow enjoyed reading through the README.md, no AI slop, just a natural writing style with tiny indictors showing the authors' enthusiasm in creating software.