We recently published our Easiest Game Engines guide which included among other engines the Construct 3 game engine. We did a review of Construct 3 all the way back in 2017 which is getting rather dated. Therefore we have decided to do a quick hands-on revisit of the Construct 3 game engine.
Construct 3 takes a codeless approach to game development, using a Spreadsheet like visual graph approach to game development as well as drag and drop behavior programming. If you need functionality outside the box, Construct enables extensions using JavaScript via their Add-On SDK as well as giving users the ability to invoke JavaScript code directly. There is also an asset store available with add-ons as well as game content, sample games, templates and more.
Features of Construct 3 include:
- Built-in image editor with animations support
- Custom collision polygons
- Tilemap editor ideal for grid-aligned games
- A physics engine for realistic simulations
- Intelligent and highly optimised pathfinding
- Instant Savegames support
- Organise objects and effects on to layers
- In-editor live previews of particles, animations and more
- Advanced text formatting with BBCode, including with Sprite Fonts and Web Fonts, as well as text effects like typewriter animation
- A range of form controls to easily get input from the user
- Advanced media support including video playback, recording gameplay videos, camera input, microphone input, audio effects, and more
- Easily integrate other web content with iframes, including embedded YouTube videos
- Use data formats like JSON, XML, data structures like Dictionaries and Arrays, and edit them visually with the data editors
- Use networking including AJAX, WebSockets, and make multiplayer games based on WebRTC DataChannels
- Get more insight into how your game is working with the debugger
- Watch real-time CPU and GPU performance measurements in the profiler
- Convenient search including find all references
- Multi-monitor support, allowing different windows on different displays
- Use different editor themes including a dark theme
If Construct 3 sounds interesting to you, you can run the entire thing in your browser and check out a free (no sign up required) trial right here, with 4 professional quality demo games to introduce you to Construct 3 development. You can learn more about Construct 3 and see it in action in our hands-on review available in the video below.