The Esenthel Engine is a C++ powered quasi-open source game engine that is now free. We first covered the Esenthel back in 2017 when it was a commercial game engine and there have been several changes since. Another big change, announced over on GameDev.net, is support for Nintendo Switch development.
Since it has been several years since we first visited the Esenthel Engine and the engine is now free with the source available, today we take another hands-on review of the engine in the video below. Although the source code is available on GitHub, do be aware of the following very important caveat.
GAME ENGINES
You may NOT integrate the source code into other game engines, that are not based on Esenthel Engine. You can create your own game engines based on Esenthel, however they must clearly state that they’re “based on Esenthel Engine” with the name linking to: http://esenthel.com or https://github.com/Esenthel/EsenthelEngine and 30% of income generated from your engine and engine related services (including but not limited to: donations, license sales, adding features, providing support) must be shared with Esenthel Engine creator.
If you are developing your own engine, or contribute to another game engine, this is a project you probably want to steer clear of. If you are looking to use it to make your own game from, as long as you don’t also want to re-sell your engine, you should be unaffected. Otherwise the license is very similar to other open source licenses and you can use Esenthel for your own commercial game projects free of cost.
You can learn more about the C++ powered engine on their website as well as download a binary installer for Windows. Alternatively you can build from source using the GitHub repository, just be aware that you will require a Visual Studio 2017/2019 install with the C++ and UWP workloads installed. You can learn more about this mature, full featured and interesting engine in the video below.