2d games with Kivy?

[Francis Ali]

Hey, do people still care about making really good 2d games with Kivy these days? Is it worth looking into?

[srikhar d]

No it's not worth it 

On Tue, Mar 24, 2026, 4:23 PM Francis Ali <franci...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey, do people still care about making really good 2d games with Kivy these days? Is it worth looking into?

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[Francis Ali]

Why do you say so? To be honest, I have actually developed some games myself with Kivy although I have not made any into an actual Android app.

[Yassine Ouchen]

First,  A lot of opinions about Kivy in gamedev come from people who never pushed it to its limits.

Yes, people still care about making good 2D games with Kivy, but it’s definitely more niche compared to engines like Godot or Unity. Performance-wise, Python usually isn’t the main limitation since rendering is handled by OpenGL and the GPU. With proper optimization, batching, shaders, and using the canvas efficiently instead of heavy widgets, you can build smooth desktop games like platformers, top-down, or even isometric games.

The real trade-off is the ecosystem: Kivy doesn’t provide many built-in game development tools, so you often have to implement systems yourself (tilemaps, animation pipelines, etc.). That’s why fewer people use it for games — not because it can’t work.

So if someone is comfortable with Python and is targeting desktop, it can absolutely be worth exploring. It’s just a more hands-on approach compared to typical game engines.

That said, maybe the real question is: who’s going to push Kivy far enough to build one of the best games made with it? It could be an interesting challenge for the community to see what’s actually possible.  

[ElliotG]

While this project is no longer active the code is available, it shows what is possibe:  http://kivent.org/

[Francis Ali]

What kind of a 2d game, if you were told was developed with Kivy, would completely amaze you upon knowing that it was truly developed with Kivy? I'm currently trying to make a research to see if what I have in mind is worth pursuing. I love making games (or at least trying to make some. I currently have a few unfinished ideas), however, I would prefer not to attempt something that eventually won't gain recognition or monetary profit.
I made this Stickman animation tool a long time ago with the primary goal of being able to integrate into any 2d game that might need it, however, I never made it public and just sort of lost motivation. It had been sitting in my local storage and so I decided to cook up a documentation and upload to github. Still needs some cleaning up though.

[Francis Ali]

I tried using Kivent a long time ago. Can't remember why i gave up on it. Perhaps it's work looking
 into again. Thanks!