Leadwerks Game Engine 5

tldr: waste of money and most important - a lot of time. Look for alternatives. I did put thousands of hours into my project on this engine since beta (had to finish it without even MSAA support due engine bugs), creating tutorials,making proper bug reports (and i had to convince dev that it's not my fault when engine was not releasing entities properly...), helping other engine users all time and now my "reward" is the engine being unusable on latest version and ban in discord server… Engine dev is just a bullshitter who makes up bs and changes directions all time, unable to properly finish anything. The whole point of Leadwerks is just to trick people into buying it by false advertising. It was already the case for LW4, but I found it out the hard way only recently. For example, the beta of LW5 had a monthly sub system and when it failed it became a dedicated one-time payment app and people had to buy again basically. So people who support LW most paid for it 3 times already since LW4 (and earlier) and now LW5 moved to LW4 page because it failed again and dev wants to use better visibility of LW4 page to trick new people. btw i forgot to mention there was a paid, now abandoned Ultra App Kit, which is just GUI and it’s bugged that much so i had to write my own widgets, after a lot of time it was made free, but it just useless in any case. I would not care about paying several times if it was worth it but it’s not. Why does it keep failing? Well, first of all performance is a lie and was any impressive only in old simple benchmarks and in beta time when it had Vulkan. Since then every big version had significant 20-30% fps drop and dev simply don't care and feigns surprise when people don't believe 10x performance graphics without any real evidence like trial and real example, meanwhile benchmarks are still a few years outdated…. I had to even stick with 1.0.0 version because 1.0.1 is bugged as heck for my game and fps is lower by 30% without any reasons for it. And ofc. 1.0.0 is not even available on this LW page. At least people may find out how bad it runs just by starting an FPS example template. Another way to do it is trying my Slipgate Tactics game (made with C++, not Lua), it’s free on itch, and reduce what you have there without VSync by 30%. Somehow the engine runs bad even with Quake (1996) graphics, especially with terrain. VR is another thing that was advertised and quickly forgotten when all naive people already bought it and were left without needed improvement for making real VR games. LUA might be a reason why you want to give it a try like i did for LW4. Well, now it does not even have a component system just because the dev does not know how to use it. And he does not care that people were heavily using it, a lot of people quit the engine because of it, since it’s become screamily obvious that dev needs just money from newbies, who would not be able to refund the engine once they realise that they can’t make a proper game with it. Even animations are still broken in LW5. Most animated models from sketchfab and other places will not work - animations just break a model, meanwhile even Windows Model View have no such issues. I really tried to fix it for some of them in Blender, but it’s just a waste of time. And ofc. there are still no vertex animations. I don’t even want to fully list missing basic features and QoLs, since it would make this review twice longer… At this point i will not be surprised if my hobby project will be not only the first and also the last proper game on Leadwerks 5.

Just use Godot

Far better options out there now. Product usefulness has expired. Nothing to see here.

Cons: - OpenGL in 2025?! bruh - In-game input lags and terrible performance, dropping with each newer version - this was already the case at the version 5.0 launch, when the RC version was faster by ~20%. GPUs like the 2060/3060 are bad idea. The engine is NOT low-hardware-friendly, despite the clearly understated system requirements - Cross-platform support: NO. Only promises of Linux and macOS ports in future (the latter didn't happen even during LE3x/4x). Proton launches with bugs (developer absolutely hates any compatibility layers and for some reason dreams of a native port, despite the LE 4.x port being complete garbage and abandoned by him personally back in 2017) - Multi-platform support: also NO, and not planned at all, not even ARM (which I consider a massive miscalculation given the rise of handheld consoles) - Broken Vega support, and on Intel UHD GPUs the editor doesn't work at all as far as I know - EXTREMELY heavy shaders. And they're hard to write, unlike in 4.6. Supposedly this will be fixed in 5.1 with the move to deferred rendering - Text documentation is incomplete in places and often outdated - C++ development is implemented pretty badly, but if you're a hardcore C++ programmer, that probably won't stop you. The real question is: what are you even doing here then? - No vertex animation (yet) and some basic features that stronger competitors already have. I strongly recommend the Leadwerks CEO implement vertex shaders externally, exactly like in LE 4.6, so if someone doesn't like his animation system, they can roll their own by overriding shaders in the project. In LE 4.6, vegetation “floated” instead of bending from the root, and it looked awful - Visual glitches from SSLR, water, and other heavy shader tech that's present here. Requires a lot of tinkering. Don't expect much help with such specific issues - For animators: Bugs with animations and importing them into meshes. There are still quite a lot of them - No real client-server networking code. Don't fall for the basic Valve p2p implementation, you're unlikely build a proper DM/TDM on it - Crashes when generating large amounts of .meta files for the editor (window thumbnails). These crashes have existed for over 3 years and are still not fixed. And the process is much slower than in LE 4.x - My favorite and VERY special point. The Leadwerks CEO, whatever his real name is, is a person who loves to confuse everyone, especially himself. Communicating through wildly inappropriate corporate formalism, he will argue against literally any suggestion or bug report as if you're proposing some utter bullsh* t, even when it's about basic functionality missing out of the box. Your attempt to help the project and be active will end with you being kicked from the Discord server, because you'll seem "too smart" and therefore dangerous to the business. CEO acting like recluse and paranoid, sees hate to him everywhere, and considers himself the smartest person in the room. The classic niche game- or engine dev archetype. Be careful! (1) - Severe lack of concentration from the developer, which causes internal plans to constantly change radically and everything goes to hell, including deadlines. For users this often means dropped support for a product they already bought and the need to buy a “new” one again. Be careful! (2) - Extremely murky stuff with Steam App ID switching back and forth, cringe marketing with promises of 10x performance over Unity, and other SPIKING TIME cringe involving Kickstarter (hello, Ultra App Kit). Full releases are very rough, there is still no real stable version, and early access ended only formally. Be careful! (3) - The Lua template is practically empty and disappointing, and there's no built-in UI editor - it's so much fun to move widgets pixel by pixel in scripts or come up with tricky formulas to make something work! (NO) If you want to do something more or less serious, be prepared to spend two or more years writing your tech base instead of actually developing your game! It also means, be prepared to repurpose old assets from the LE3/4 era, searching tech forums, read programming textbooks and articles, constantly consult with chatbots - basically, engage in SELF-LEARNING, which is not bad in itself, but the lack of basic functionality, again, is hardly a motivating factor in this case, and closed source code won't help you add something of your own to the engine or editor (the plugin system is still quite limited and does not cover all needs), even if you have the skills. In short, you'll be severely limited by the existing bare minimum, and therefore highly dependent on the CEO's updates. But you must remember: the CEO doesn't want to spoil you with unnecessary frills! He assumes you already have enough, so he doesn't want to add anything radically new, especially something he doesn't know how to implement quickly and easily. Be careful! (4) Pros: + OpenGL in 2025! Wow! + Good price + Finally x64 and multithreading (weakly implemented, but at least it exists) + Lua! + Convenient prototyping UI and support for built-in geometric brushes + Retro vibes: Y2K-style UI ideas (Valve Hammer, maybe little touch of CryEngine 3) filtered through mid-2010s minimalism + Genuinely easy to make beginner-level games with community help. Newbies get video tutorials and even developer tech support + Built-in IDE Despite the CEO's antics, I still believe in the product. I do care about its fate - I'm still developing commercial games on LE. However, if within the next year nothing changes in 5.1/5.2, if many promised features don't appear, and if there is no serious work on fixing both technical and behavioral issues on the developer's side, I will change this review to negative and will be considering a complete and final abandonment of its use by 2028. I haven't been part of its community for many months and don't plan to return. Even now, I generally do NOT recommend this engine for serious commercial development. It's too niche and too specific. It's suitable for warm Y2K era nostalgia and for gaining experience. If the indie scene is more important to you than big commercial plans, or if you're a complete beginner in gamedev and you just want to do some prototype quickly and well, or if you come from the Source / UT2004, etc. modding scene - this is actually a good place to gain REAL experience, and you will get a lot of it within a year or two, guaranteed (try not to get burnt out in the process). But if you're starting from zero and want to build a career in the industry, 99% you have absolutely nothing to do here, just learn Unity/UE.

developer released a newer version of this engine, called ultra. A few years later, they 1.0 it and right after decide to roll it back into leadwerks. hope you didnt buy them both! oh well! that aside, its very hard to recommend this engine (nee ultra or otherwise) for any serious work. especially not for $$. the editor is basic, has absolutely terrible import performance that will freeze for hours while slowly converting. expect lots of external converting depending on your asset pipelines. saving maps lags for seconds. the rendering performance is not as impressive as they lead to believe on the ultra benchmark website maybe good for hobbyist learning and 3d game jams but using this for anything more would be a serious liability

I am currently playing with various projects I have This engine has made it easy to import from other engines, primarily 3D data I can export, the editor operates like a much better hammer from source, the scripting seems to be streamlined, it uses a very optimized lua integration. I am only just getting into what is possible with this engine and it is impressing me more and more. I have not figured out what I want to do with it but given what I have seen before, my view is as long as the engine is streamlined then that is what matters. Simple outputs run fantastically so far, I have a long way to go to see what is truly possibly but so far I am impressed. Not only is the performance, compilation, and experimentation fantastic, the developer behind this has an entire walkthrough built in and a series on youtube covering up to advanced systems for developers. In all my years this is what I have dreamt of for an engine to experiment with and even at this early time I am loving every moment. This is definitely an engine I recommend for beginners to play with, others do not offer as much direct support. If you use Discord, the lead developer behind this engine does weekly workshops and discussions on Saturdays. I cannot recommend this engine enough.

The first selling point: "order-of-magnitude faster performance under heavy rendering loads" Is just not true, plain and simple. On the FPS example level framerate goes up and down depending what I look at, it stutters and just doesn't feel smooth and good to play. Mind you - the level is tiny and has very little original assets to load. Only few simple scripts, only few tight, dark corridors to render, only 1 animated gun, only 1 animated enemy asset. Not much. It should fly like a rocket and serve me a triple-digit fps at all times... but it's struggling to keep it over 60. On RTX 3070. And when I try to add some terrain or use materials with tessellation (another big selling point) it only gets worse. Order of magnitude worse? Well not that tragic, but pretty bad nevertheless ;p With just a simple terrain plate added to the sample fps map, my framerate dropped to around 38-55 fps. At this point it's getting close to unplayable, and expanding the level any further is pointless. Putting only "2 GB RAM" and "Nvidia GeForce 420 or AMD Radeon RX 5300M" in the minimum requirements looks absurd, there's absolutely ZERO chance, that the example fps level would be playable on that. The premise is great - a lightweight efficient engine, with very focused scope, no bloat, with clean and easy to read UI, and LUA support - on paper it is amazing. In practice in seems to be in deep work in progress state, and the "order of magnitude faster performance under heavy rendering loads" is imo just not there. Maybe it's fast in some hyper-specific test made up for marketing purpose, but in real gameplay scenarios it disappoints. At least in its current form. PS. My short playtime can be deceiving, bc I spent most of my time with "Ultra Engine Pro" which was later rebranded to Leadwerks 5, but it's basically the same thing.

I used this engine to make my game and I couldn't imagine using anything else.

After more than 6 years of working with Unreal Engine and experimenting with almost every tool on the market, Leadwerks 5 is a breath of fresh air, It's just interesting to develop with this engine. My main issue with modern engines like Unity or the newer UE is how they prioritize 'heavy' tech over the actual needs of indie developers. Leadwerks 5, however, feels incredibly liberating. It just works, giving me the freedom to focus on my creative vision rather than troubleshooting, I guess. It even won me over completely when it ate my character model perfectly on the very first try without any fuss! :D But what truly makes this engine stand out is the community and the developer himself. He is incredibly active, always replies to everyone, and makes sure no one is forgotten. Knowing that the person behind the tool is there to help makes a world of difference. I'm staying hopeful that I will use this engine for every one of my projects, creating with total joy! I LOVE BUNNIES! 🐇✨ If you want an engine that respects your time and your indie spirit, this is the one..

I’ve been doing game development as an indie developer for a while and have used many different engines. Unfortunately, most tools out there suffer from feature creep and are bloated with systems aimed at medium or large teams. With Leadwerks, I can quickly prototype a game without worrying about features slowing down my workflow. I feel at home when opening the editor. My creativity just flows.