A Video Game Engine for the ESP8266

Espressif Systems’ ESP8266 module was originally intended as a low-cost, WiFi-connected microcontroller for IoT applications. But, over the years, it has proven to be extremely versatile, and ESP8266 development boards are now practically the default option if you want WiFi in your project. Now, you can even use one as the basis of a video game console thanks to Igor’s ESP8266 game engine.

While it has certainly been possible to program games for the ESP8266 in the past, the process was cumbersome without a good framework to build upon. That’s the entire purpose of a video game engine, and virtually every video game made over the past few decades was programmed on top of some kind of game engine. A game engine keeps you from having to reinvent the wheel — the underlying mechanics necessary for a game to run, and lets you jump right into programming the actual game.

Igor’s ESP8266 Little Game Engine runs as a virtual machine, and has a screen resolution of 128x128 pixels. It can display up to 16 colors, a single background layer, 32 soft sprites with collision tracking and rotation, and has 20kb of RAM available for the game. It can run at 20 FPS (Frames Per Second) and has provisions for eight control buttons. Best of all, Igor has designed an online emulator and compiler, so you can start experimenting with the ESP8266 Little Game Engine and create your own game right now!