An open-source game-dev repo catalog, and a small set of English guides for under-documented games.
GameDevHub is a small game-focused site. The main thing is a filterable catalog of open-source game-development repositories on GitHub — license, engine, and quality filters layered over the GitHub data so you can find projects that are still maintained and clearly licensed. Alongside it sits a growing set of English guides for games where existing English documentation is patchy or non-existent. Both halves are likely to expand into adjacent game-related content over time.
Notes about the games and the catalog reflect the author's reading of public information and gameplay; for the games, the original community wikis and Steam pages remain the canonical source. For the repos, the linked GitHub project is always the source of truth.
Open-source game-dev repo catalog
The primary section of the site, at /tools/, is a filterable catalog of open-source game-development repositories pulled from GitHub. It is aimed at indie developers who keep running into the same problem: most repository lists on the web are either huge unsorted "awesome" lists with no quality signal, or curated lists that have not been touched in three years and are now full of dead links and ambiguous licenses.
The catalog is filterable by engine (Godot, Unity, Unreal, Bevy, Phaser, Pygame, LÖVE, and a few smaller ones), genre, primary language, license, and component type (full game, template, plugin, asset pack, tool). The table is sortable by stars, recency, or an internal quality score described below. Every entry links back to the source repository on GitHub, which is always the real source of truth for license terms, current activity, and documentation.
If you are looking specifically for repos that you can use as a starting point for a commercial game, the License filter is the most important control on the page. Picking "MIT / Apache" will narrow the list to repositories whose terms allow you to ship a closed-source commercial game built on top of them without obligating you to release your own code.
How repos are vetted
Repositories in the catalog are scored from 0 to 100 on a small set of mechanical signals derived from public GitHub metadata, and only repositories above a minimum threshold are shown. The score is intentionally boring — it is not trying to predict whether the project is "good", only whether it is in good enough shape that an indie developer can reasonably spend time on it. The signals used are:
- Stars and popularity. Used as a baseline signal, but not the dominant one — a heavily-starred project that has gone silent ranks lower than a smaller project that ships regularly.
- Recency of activity. Time since the last commit and the last release. A project that has not been touched in years drops out of the visible list.
- Contributor count. A rough bus-factor signal. Single-author projects are not penalised — most indie game tools are single-author by nature.
- Fork ratio. Forks per star, useful as context: a high fork ratio often means the project is being treated as a starting template rather than a finished library.
- README quality. A basic check for a real description, install instructions, a license file, and an example. Stub READMEs are filtered out.
- License clarity. Repositories whose license cannot be parsed are flagged "Unknown", because for a game developer an unparseable license is functionally the same as a restrictive one.
The score is recomputed against the latest GitHub data on each catalog refresh. There is no paid placement and no way to pay to be ranked higher or removed. If a repository in the catalog has misclassified metadata, the most reliable fix is to correct it at the source on GitHub (license file, topics, description) so the next refresh picks it up.
Reference guides
Two longer reference guides live on their own pages. Both are aimed at indie developers picking up a project from the repo catalog and trying to make a quick decision about whether to use it.
- Open-source licenses for game developers MIT, Apache, LGPL, GPL, Creative Commons, and custom — what each one means when you ship a commercial game. Rules of thumb for the common cases.
- Game engines compared A short, practical comparison of Godot, Unity, Unreal, Bevy, and the smaller frameworks (Phaser, LÖVE, Pygame, MonoGame, GameMaker). Strengths, trade-offs, and when to pick each.
Game guides
The game guides cover titles where existing English documentation is sparse, out of date, or non-existent. The selection criteria are deliberately narrow: a game has to have an active community somewhere, a real reason that a structured English reference does not already exist (typically a Chinese-only release or a fragmented community wiki), and enough mechanical depth to make a guide worth writing. The current set is two Chinese-language wuxia role-playing games; the section is structured to absorb other under-served titles, genres, and game-adjacent content as they are added.
Click a game below to expand its overview, or follow the link inside to the full guide.
Long Yin Li Zhi Zhuan 龙胤立志传
Long Yin Li Zhi Zhuan (LYLZZ, 龙胤立志传) is an open-world wuxia RPG that fuses character progression with sect management. The player joins one of seven sects, learns internal and external martial arts from a library of 180+ skills, and works through a multi-chapter story whose outcome depends on character build, sect choice, and alignment. There is no official English release, which is the main reason this section exists.
The Long Yin section is organised around the questions a first-time player tends to hit in order: difficulty selection, talent picks, what the six core attributes actually do in combat, a comparison of the seven joinable sects (Emei, Xianxia, Wudang, Penglai, Thunderclap, Medicine King, Grand Hidden), a build tier list covering the six main build archetypes, notes on the in-game economy, chapter-2 unlock conditions, an endings overview, and a growing FAQ for the questions that recur on community forums.
If you only have time to read one page before you start, read the beginner walkthrough. If you have already started a run and feel stuck, the FAQ is probably the fastest path to an answer. The full hub lives at /games/long-yin/.
Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion 大侠立志传
Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion (DXLZZ) is the better-known title in this corner of the genre. It is a turn-based wuxia RPG by Half Amateur Studio (半瓶醋工作室), released on Steam in November 2023 and supported in English alongside Simplified Chinese and several other languages. The official English translation is functional but rough around character and sect names — community translations of those terms are not consistent, which is part of what the guide page tries to standardise.
The Road to Passion guide page is a single long reference covering: a Steam buyer's section (price, languages, whether it's worth it), getting-started notes, the six attributes and skill cultivation, joining conditions for the 30+ sects in the game, the combat system, a build tier list, companion recruitment, silver farming, all 15 endings (including the 5 "true" endings), a DLC section, romance and NPC notes, and a list of missable content. It also includes early notes on the official spin-off, Another Hero's Adventure (大侠立志传外传), planned for 2026.
FAQ
What is this site, in one sentence?
A filterable catalog of open-source game-development repositories on GitHub, plus a small set of English guides for under-documented games. The two halves share a maintainer and a focus on games, and the plan is to expand into adjacent game-related content over time.
Why is the repo catalog focused rather than exhaustive?
The aim is signal over completeness. A list of every public game-dev repository on GitHub already exists — it's called the GitHub search page. What is harder to find is a shorter list filtered for license clarity and recent activity, which is what this catalog tries to be. The scoring threshold described above is the main mechanism for keeping the list useful instead of large.
How are games picked for the guides section?
Three rough criteria: there has to be an active community for the game somewhere; existing English documentation has to be patchy, out of date, or non-existent; and the game has to have enough mechanical depth that a structured reference is worth writing. The current pair are Chinese-language wuxia RPGs — that reflects what the maintainer happened to be playing when the site started, not a permanent scope decision. Suggestions for other under-served titles are welcome.
What language are the guides written in?
English, with the original language kept in place for proper nouns that have no clean English equivalent — sect names, technique names, character names. Where a non-English term is the canonical one it is shown in the original characters with a romanisation or short gloss alongside.
Is any of this paid placement?
No. No repository in the catalog is paid for, and there is no way to pay to be included, ranked higher, or removed. The site is monetised only by Google AdSense, which is independent of the catalog's contents.
What ties the repo catalog and the game guides together?
Both halves are about games — one is for people making them, the other is for people playing them. They share a maintainer, a visual style, and a bias toward useful-over-exhaustive coverage. The site navigation keeps them clearly separated so readers who only want one half are not made to wade through the other.