Prowl C# Game Engine Preview
Prowl is an exciting new C#-powered, cross-platform, open-source 3D game engine that is… prowling up on it’s 1.0 release. The project is released under the MIT open source license and is available on Windows, Mac and…
Prowl is an exciting new C#-powered, cross-platform, open-source 3D game engine that is… prowling up on it’s 1.0 release. The project is released under the MIT open source license and is available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Best of all it provides both a Unity-like editing experience, as well as a number of underlying C# game development frameworks. In fact, you don’t need to even touch the editor to make complete games using Prowl, although the editor is both full functioning and feature rich.
Features of the Prowl game engine include:
Pure C# Architecture: Built entirely in C# (.NET 10 / C# 14) with zero FFI/interop overhead between game code and engine systems.
Fully Open & Modular: MIT-licensed source code split into independent, standalone libraries, royalty free, open source libraries.
Stand-Alone Runtime: Ships games completely separate from the editor with zero runtime dependency on the authoring environment.
Standard Tooling Support: Uses regular .csproj files, allowing seamless use with Visual Studio, VS Code, and Rider without plugins.
Full-Featured 3D Editor: Includes a Unity-like layout featuring Scene View, Hierarchy, Inspector, Project Browser, Console, and Game View.
PBR Rendering: Supports a metallic physically-based rendering workflow, cascaded shadow maps, and a dedicated render thread.
Node-Based Shader Graph: Features 150+ nodes and cross-compilation (SPIR-V, HLSL, GLSL, Metal) via a Slang wrapper.
Advanced Post-Processing: Includes HDR tonemapping (ACES, AgX), Bloom, GTAO, Screen Space Reflections, Depth of Field, and Volumetric Fog.
Jitter Physics 2: Robust 3D physics engine supporting extensive colliders, 7 constraint types, raycasting, and character controllers.
Spatial 3D Audio: Powered by MiniAudio with support for attenuation, Doppler effects, common audio formats, and a full effect chain.
Terrain System: Built-in quadtree LOD, heightmap/splatmap painting, and holes support.
GPU Instancing & Particles: High-performance GPU-instanced rendering for meshes, grass, trees, and particle systems with multi-module simulations.
Prefabs & Asset Management: Supports nested prefabs with override tracking alongside a GUID-based asset pipeline.
Input Action System: Action phases, composite bindings (e.g., WASD layouts), and multi-device support (keyboard, mouse, gamepad).
Script Hot-Reloading: Iterate on game logic quickly inside the editor without restarting the application.
Cross-Platform Build System: Export standalone applications with packed asset files (.prowlpak) for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Modular Ecosystem Sub-Libraries: Powered by specialized companion libraries handling UI (flexbox-style immediate mode), vector graphics/typography, 64-bit mathematics, serialization, and shader compilation.
Key Links
Prowl GitHub Repository
Prowl Modular Libraries Repository
Prowl Discord Server
You can learn more about the Prowl Game Engine and see it in action in the video below.