Meet Forge2D, the engine behind Sol Inc.

Sol Inc. doesn’t run on Unity or Unreal. It runs on Forge2D, my very own game engine for 2D retro games.

Where it comes from

I made games back in the days of the early consoles, and on mobile before Unity was a thing. On each of them I was an engine programmer as well as a game programmer.

Those engines were built for what we’d now call low-performance devices, so every byte and every millisecond counted. Forge2D borrows a number of ideas from them that are all about raw performance and efficiency. You’ll see it in the load times and in the game’s file size. I’d say you’ll notice it in the frames per second too, but honestly, on modern hardware the games run so fast that it’s not something you’d ever notice.

What it does

All the standard stuff. It builds the game’s assets into the bundles the game ships with. It draws everything on screen. It plays the tracker music and sound, and it handles input from keyboards, mice and gamepads.

It also has full multiplayer networking, including dedicated servers for Linux.

It’s Windows only for now, although I have thought about a Mac port and a Linux version in the future. And if I prove that works, then maybe native Steam Deck and, very remotely, Nintendo Switch? Who knows?

Can you use it?

Not right now. That’s not because I want to hide it away. It’s simply that maintaining a game engine for other people is a lot of work, and at this point I want to focus on the games that use it.

But you never know. Maybe one day…