DragonRuby 6 Released – Currently Free

DragonRuby, a Ruby language powered game development toolkit, recently released DragonRuby 6. Additionally until Thursday, October the 10th, you can get the Standard edition free ( regularly $48 ).

Highlight features of Dragon Ruby are:

Zero Dependency Install

We’ve created a custom multi-level runtime specifically tuned for building games. There are no outside installers or OS level prerequisites. Everything is self-contained. Even a Raspberry Pi can be used to build games.

We handle the compilation, packaging, and execution of your code, letting you concentrate on what matters.

Indie and Community Focused

We understand the challenges that indie devs face (the creators of the engine are indie game devs themselves). We want you to succeed and ship your game. Our Discord Channel is very active and there is always someone around to help.

Editor Agnostic

We don’t vendor-lock you into an IDE (and by extension we don’t collect usage data about you). You can use whatever editor you like. All commands to build are accessible via a simple Command Line Interface.

Lean, Fast, Hotloaded

Optimized for size and speed. This is not the same Ruby you’d use for building web apps with Rails (far from it).

DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. He is one of the core maintainers of libSDL and has worked on many critically acclaimed games (Psychonauts, Braid, Quake, and Unreal Tournament to name a few).

It’s been battled tested by indie game creator Amir Rajan who’s already released games with it to the Nintendo Switch. It powers real world games that have amassed millions of downloads (The New Yorker).

Oh, and it’s tiny. Like really tiny. The entire toolkit is ~3.5 megabytes.

Cross Platform

Turn key builds for Windows, MacOS, and Linux with seamless publishing to Itch.io.

DragonRuby targets every platform: PC, Mac, Linux, Web Assembly, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, XBOX One, and PS4 (console compilation requires a business entity, NDA verification, contact Amir at [email protected] for more info).

Intuitive, Data-Oriented APIs

Dirt simple APIs capable of creating complex 2D games. Game Toolkit keeps you moving fast with hot-loaded code. You’ll see changes in real time and receive instant feedback without having to rebuild. The in-game Console let’s you make quick state changes and execute code on the fly. Hello world is just one file and one method.

# Define a tick method in main.rb which will be executed at 60hz.
def tick args
  # Render a label at the top left showing the current tick count.
  args.outputs.labels << { x: 10, y: 10.from_top, text: "#{args.state.tick_count}." }

  # Render a sprite at the bottom left
  args.outputs.sprites << { x: 10, y: 10, w: 100, h: 100, path: 'player.png' }

  # If the mouse is clicked, play a sound.
  args.outputs.sounds << 'fx.wav' if args.inputs.mouse.click
end

Key Links

DragonRuby Homepage

DragonRuby Itch Page (Better Info than Homepage)

DragonRuby 6 Release Notes

DragonRuby Documentation

DragonRuby Discord

You can learn more about DragonRuby, the DragonRuby 6 release and how you can get it for free for a limited time in the video below.

Scroll to Top