Cube engine
Ranked 13 of 20 game engines by recommenders
Free, open-source game engine that people remember fondly, praised for its octree rendering and for providing the ENet networking library.
Free, open-source game engine that people remember fondly, praised for its octree rendering and for providing the ENet networking library.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fondly remembered, admired engine work
“I have fond memories of porting Cube, Sauerbraten and AssaultCube to the Mac back in the day.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Voxile: A ray-traced game made in its own engine and programming language” “His early work on Cube engine and Amiga-E are still awesome to look at.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Voxile: A ray-traced game made in its own engine and programming language”
Other game engines people recommend
The four most recommended other game engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Godot | 213 | 57 | 79% | 12 | 2 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Unity | 110 | 165 | 40% | 12 | 16 yrs8 owners | — |
| Unreal Engine | 104 | 89 | 54% | 12 | — | — |
| Bevy game engine | 50 | 18 | 74% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Cube engineThis page | 8 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“no dials is going to get pretty limiting pretty quickly”
“your comment reminded me of Cube”
“I think I've only seen the first Cube movie and enjoyed it.”
“The Cube engines render geometry using octrees rather than the traditional BSP or recursive portal approach.”
“Extremely lower cost, better performance, less bugs, better support”
“I have fond memories of porting Cube, Sauerbraten and AssaultCube to the Mac back in the day.”
“His early work on Cube engine and Amiga-E are still awesome to look at.”
“Shout out to Cube for giving us the ENet library.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.