// the find
suchipi/hex-engine
A modern 2D game engine for the browser.
Hex Engine is a browser 2D game engine that maps Entity-Component-System onto React-style hooks — every component is a function, behavior is composed via hook calls, and there's a built-in dev inspector. It targets TypeScript-first developers who already think in hooks and want that mental model for game objects rather than learning a new paradigm.
The hook-based composition model is genuinely clever — `useNewComponent`, `useDraw`, `useUpdate` let you build complex behavior by stacking calls rather than inheriting class hierarchies. First-class Aseprite and Tiled support is a real time-saver for solo developers using those tools. The built-in inspector (a full React app) lets you pause, inspect, and interact with the entity tree at runtime, which most browser engines skip entirely. The monorepo is well-structured: core, 2d, inspector, and scripts are cleanly separated, and integration tests use image snapshot comparisons rather than just unit-testing logic.
678 stars in ~6 years is a ceiling, not a floor — the community never took off, Discord is likely a ghost town, and the README still carries a 'Work in Progress' warning from 2020. The engine is built on Webpack via a custom scripts package with Babel, which is a maintenance liability in 2026 when the rest of the ecosystem has moved on. Matter.js physics integration is shallow — fine for simple collisions, a dead end for anything complex. No WebGL renderer; Canvas2D only means you're giving up GPU compositing and hitting performance walls earlier than competing engines.