Wintermute: Free 2D Game Engine Review
Video Game Development with Wintermute: the 2D Adventure Game Maker
Jul 1, 2009
The current trend in 2D game creation is for small web-enabled casual games, mostly created in Adobe Flash. However, the popularity of complex story-driven point-and-click adventure games such as the commercially successful Myst and Monkey Island series suggests there is still a profitable market for games that involve the player through plot development and interactive puzzles rather than relying on the instant thrill of arcade action.
While such games could be created in Adobe Flash, or in other generic 2D game engines such as Mark Overmars's Game Maker, the ideal video game development program for making interactive adventure games should be:
- Specialized to the task to overcome a long learning process.
- Reasonably priced, with generous licensing.
- Well documented and well supported.
- Proven technology, associated with a number of commercial titles.
The Wintermute engine is such a program.
Wintermute Game Making Software Overview
The Wintermute engine is a downloadable free game making software package with a specialized toolset that allows the user to create and deploy point-and-click adventure games. The program consists of a runtime interpreter for playing the games made with the engine, and a set of visual editors for creating and managing the game assets.
2D Video Game Development Engine Features
The Wintermute engine consists of a comprehensive set of WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) development tools in the form of graphical user interfaces. These interfaces include:
- A project manager, to manage the higher levels of the game development process.
- A scene editor, to control the visual layout of game levels and interactivity within each scene.
- A sprite editor, for creating the characters, animations and objects that populate the game.
- A string table manager, to manage the text commands used in the game.
Wintermute also employs an object-orientated scripting language with a C-like syntax, which enables the inclusion of complex puzzle interactions within a game.
Wintermute Open Source Game Engine Licensing
The Wintermute Engine can be used free of charge for creating both hobby and commercial projects, and on request, the engine source code is available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Wintermute has been used to create a number of commercial adventure game titles, including:
- The ill-fated Limbo of the Lost, which was eventually withdrawn by its publishers over plagiarism claims.
- 1½ Ritter for Warner Bros.
- The MDNA Games series, including The Colour of Murder, East Side Story and Remedy.
- The Lost Crown by Darkling Room Games.
- Ghost in the Sheet by CBE.
Wintermute is supported not only by excellent online documentation, but by an active, knowledgeable community of game makers in the Wintermute forums.
The Best Adventure Game Maker Available
As a specialized game engine, the Wintermute learning curve is less steep than that for generic 2D game engines, as each function in the Wintermute toolset has a use in creating adventure games. The prefabricated game templates provided with the Wintermute software download allows a user with little or no previous game development experience to quickly master the basics.
With a proven track record in the adventure game genre, excellent support, a very liberating license and usable free of charge, the Wintermute game engine offers everything an adventure game developer could possibly hope for.
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