Developers seeking to develop games for Android are presented with a constellation of tools, SDKs, and APIs to assist them along the way. Below is not a definitive list, but should work as a starting point for anyone looking for what is currently available.

In early 2015, SiliconANGLE published a similar list, and we’re now updating it because of recent news including rumors that the Nintendo NX would be Android-based (a rumor dispelled) and more recently that Android console set-top-box maker Ouya, Inc.’s assets were bought by peripherals company Razer Inc.

GAME ENGINES

A game engine provides the foundation to build a game on Android. In most cases it will include all the resources to deal with user interface, graphics animation, graphics FX, 3D rendering, and sound. Below is a list of the most popular current game engines available for the Android platform, their pricing schedule, and what games and game developers already use them.

Also included is a short list of free open source game engines for indie and small developers to examine.

Unity

The Unity game engine is free for indie developers, but can become pricey for the fully licensed version. Unity ships with scripting in C#, JavaScript, or Boo; a powerful physics engine; 2D and 3D animation pipelines—even 2D physics, and in 3D cloth components, collision detection, and vehicle physics; post-processing, shader FX, and particle FX… The details of the engine is well-rounded and full featured.

The most recent release is Unity 5.1.1 published on June 17, 2015. It is coded in C, C++, and C# and Unity Technologies provides the game engine across 42 different platforms. The central mission of the Unity game engine has always been pushed as providing a capability for rapidly prototyping and launching cross-platform games.

The Unity 5 release also includes improvements to developer tools, which include Unit Cloud Build—which harnesses the cloud to provide content versioning, source control, and build automation in the cloud (for $25/mo. for Personal Edition users). Game Performance Reporting for Unity Professional users allows developers to improve performance and examine errors from the field, and cloud-based analytics, currently in open beta, provides a dashboard of actionable insights into player behavior to help improve monetization and gaming experience (also $25/mo. for Personal Edition users.)

Unity can be seen in ChronoBlade (S. Korea only), Deus Ex: The Fall, Leviathan Warships, Temple Run 2, and The Room.

Unity 5 Personal Edition is free. Unity Professional is priced starting at $1,500 (or $75/mo. subscription) and the optional Unity Android Pro adds $1,500 (or $75/mo. subscription), as result a corporate publisher could spend $3,000 or $150/mo. for the full package on Android.

www.unity3d.com

Corona

Corona Labs Inc. publishes a 2D development platform called Corona for Android coders who want a strong library and don’t need that extra dimension. The Corona SDK seeks to become the de facto standard for 2D mobile graphics in gaming.

The Corona SDK supports all major platforms, including Android (and Android TV), iOS, Kindle, and Windows Phone 8—and importantly does so with a single codebase. The SDK also boasts integration with industry standards such as OpenGL, OpenAL, Box2D, Facebook, SQLite, and more. The Corona SDK also provides support for in-app purchases, paving the way for game monetization. Corona Lab’s parent company Fuse Powered, Inc. is a leading monetization platform, which integrates directly.

Corona also pushes a thriving developer ecosystem replete with a community support forum, worldwide events, hundreds of tutorials and guides, and community-built 3rd party tools.

Games Corona was used to build on Android include Freeze!, Streetfood Tycoon, Little Galaxy, and uCraft.

The Corona SDK is free, but the Corona Enterprise Small Business edition (which includes a native-call interface for Objective-C, C, C++, and Java) costs $79/mo. and the Corona Enterprise Unlimited edition costs $199/mo. The Small Business version cites at $500,000 revenue limit; whereas Unlimited has none. None of the options require royalties.

www.coronalabs.com

Unreal Engine

The Unreal Engine is the brainchild of Epic Games, Inc., the same company that brought us Gears of War for the Xbox 360. Unreal Engine 4 for Android is another example of an extremely well-featured game engine designed with sheer horsepower in mind.

The most recent release of the Unreal Engine is Unreal 4. This release is compatible with a wide variety of GPUs and devices, provides an AI framework, terrain generation, animation tools and a source control mechanism that integrates with GitHub (for subscription members). Recent developments in mobile GPUs for smartphones and other Android devices have also given developers, and Unreal 4, a broader canvas for developers to paint on (just watch the demo in the link.) Epic Games also helpfully provides a guide for getting started quickly with Unreal 4 on Android.

Games that wield Unreal 4 on Anrdoid include Borderlands Legends, Horn, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, Death Rally, and Injustice.

In an interesting move, Epic Games released the Unreal Engine 4 for free, to everyone; licensing for the engine only seeks a 5% royalty after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter.

www.unrealengine.com

Marmalade

The Marmalade SDK is published by Marmalade Technologies Ltd, and seeks to boasts an impressive lineup of developers using its software: EA, PopCap Games, Activision and Square-Enix. That alone should suggest that Marmalade has something under the hood that makes it worthy of appearing on this list.

As for the actual under-the-hood, Marmalade provides a C++ core with additional modules for Lua, HTML5 and Objective-C. The objective of Marmalade is to be as close to native as possible for whatever device the game will be installed on, which decreases API latency and development time. Marmalade also boasts cross-platform capability for single source code to multiple device platforms and easy integration with 3rd party libraries and APIs directly in the tool.

The most recent Marmalade SDK is version 7.8 published on January 15, 2015. The low level C API of Marmalade allows for an abstraction layer for access do device functionality. The higher level C++ API, Marmalade Studio, provides support for functionality such as 2D graphics (bitmaps, fonts, etc.) and 3D (mesh rendering, boned animation.) The SDK also permits access via the OpenGL ES API.

Games built on Marmalade SDK include Plants vs. Zombies, SimCity Buildit, Signal to the Stars, and Beyond Space.

The Marmalade SDK is free, but native extensions are limited and developers cannot customize splash screens or receive on-device debugging. The Community Edition costs $15/mo. ($149/yr.) and that delivers everything mentioned except for debugging, that starts with Indie at $499/yr. Other levels include Plus at $1,500/yr. and Pro at $3,500/yr. Each step up in pricing schedule increases the amount of support and other features available to the subscriber.

www.madewithmarmalade.com

Project Anarchy

Launched in 2013, Project Anarchy is the free mobile SDK developed and published by Havok, an Irish middleware, physics, and FX game engine company. The Project Anarchy software suite boasts many of the same features developed by Havok for PC, including the basic game engine, Havok Vision; a powerful physics engine, Havok Physics; a state-of-the-art animation studio and renderer, Havok Animation Studio; and an in-game pathfinding solution for character motion, Havok AI.

The most recent release of Project Anarchy launched on August 8, 2014 with the Vision SDK version 2014.1.0. It includes FBX integration—a file format used by Autodesk Gameware and other 3D modelling software—particle static and dynamic lighting, light shafts, automatic resource updates via vFileServe, additional shadow rendering, FXAA for mobile devices, and lots of other improvements.

Project Anarchy is used in Anarchy RPG, a proof-of-concept RPG that shows off the features of the development SDK.

Project Anarchy is free, however AAA game developers can license the full source from Havok and smaller teams can negotiate prices.

www.projectanarchy.com

Ludei

Ludei, Inc., the San Francisco-based publisher of CocoonJS provides this app and game development platform to deliver HTML5 and native support for everything a game developer needs. Its claim to fame is a software platform built from the ground up to “accelerate all aspects of HTML5 execution” by providing the best JavaScript and HTML5 execution environments to choose from on mobile.

For game developers CocoonJS delivers a high performance HTML5 canvas for 2D and WebGL for iOS and Android. It uses a highly optimized JavaScript virtual machine with a fast implementation to provide this acceleration. Ludei also claims that CocoonJS is the only platform to date that can deploy WebGL native apps for both iOS 5.0 onwards and Android 2.3 onwards.

CocoonJS also boasts remote debugging of web content directly on the device. Developers can also use the CocoonJS cloud system to monetize and analyze deployed applications.

Android games that use Ludei CocoonJS include Magnetized, iBasket, Sumon, Run Pixie Run and LoneSpace.

Ludei provides CocoonJS for free for indie developers (and requires a splash screen) however, big companies can contact Ludei’s sales team for special requests.

www.ludei.com

Open Source Android game engines

Developers looking for a free, open source library or game engine may want to reach out from the above commercial-heavy list above. As a result, here’s a shorter list, with less details of projects to look into for the open source crowd.

libGDX is a free, open source Java library (a framework) for 2D and 3D game development licensed under Apache 2.0. jMonkeyEngine 3.0 is an open-source Java cross-platform game engine that supports Android for 2D and 3D games, with extensive documentation.

Cocos2d-X is another example of a free, open source game engine C++ library. The Android 2D OpenGL game engine AndEngine, also Apache 2.0 licensed, also has a book AndEngine for Android Game Development Cookbook.

Ogre3D is a C++ 3D game engine for Anrdroid moving into its 2.1 development version. For a final C++ game engine library there is the Linderdaum Engine, an object-oriented cross-platform engine for games, business, and scientific visualization (with its own custom license for commercial use.)

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

While most of the game engine SDKs above also include social engagement plug-ins or modules, a developer might want to look outside the engine for a different type of engagement to fill a gap or provide a different experience.

ShareThis Inc. released Socialize in 2011 and this social engagement solution provides both an SDK and API hooks for the ShareThis ecosystem of services.

The Google Play services SDK and APK allows access via apps to Google+.

Nextpeer launched a social plug-in for Android and iOS February this year, the SDK is available and it also plugs into Unity (game engine, see above.) The platform is free (with ads) and it costs $199/mo. to do away with the ads.

LIVESTREAMING

Welcome to the era of Twitch. The ability to record and livestream games (even mobile games) has been making developers lots of money and players extremely happy. Certainly having a great game to start is a must, but when it’s time to put the icing on the cake look here.

Oddly, Twitch integration directly into mobile games is not yet possible, although Twitch announced an upcoming mobile streaming SDK in 2014 nothing has materialized.

Instead, mobile recording software publisher Kamcord Inc. has stepped up to the plate and released an embedded SDK for streaming mobile games to its platform. Developers interested in downloading and hooking up Kamcord’s SDK can get it at their website.

photo credit: BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!! via photopin (license)