What Krotox is, what is inside it, who it is for, what you need to know first, and how these docs are organised.
Krotox Engine is a 2D game engine written from scratch in C++17. You build your game in a desktop editor for Windows or macOS, write gameplay in C#, and export to Android with one click.
If you have used Unity or Godot for 2D, the ideas will feel familiar: scenes, entities with components, a visual editor, and scripts. The difference is that Krotox does one thing, 2D, and does it with a small, fast runtime built on Vulkan 1.3.
Krotox is at version 1.0.0. These docs describe the 2D workflow as it exists today. Menu names and small details can change between builds.
What is inside
Piece
What it is
What it means for you
Editor
A dockable desktop app (Windows, macOS)
Where you build scenes, tweak values and press Play
Renderer
Vulkan 1.3 2D batcher
Draws thousands of sprites, tiles and text quickly, with low battery use on phones
ECS
EnTT entity-component system
Every object is an entity with components you add or remove
Physics
Box2D 3.x
Rigidbodies, colliders, joints and collision callbacks
Scripting
Mono C#
You write gameplay in C#. Changes hot-reload on desktop
Audio
miniaudio
Sound playback in the engine
Text
MSDF text rendering
Text that stays sharp at any size on any phone screen
Android export
NDK, Gradle, Full-AOT Mono
One click turns your project into a signed APK or AAB
Who Krotox is for
Solo developers and small teams making mobile-first 2D games: platformers, top-down games, puzzle games, tilemap and procedural-level games.
People who like the Unity-style workflow but want a lighter engine with predictable performance on phones.
Anyone who wants to own what they ship. The license has no royalties and no runtime fees. See the Terms & Conditions.
What you need to know first
You do not need to know C++ or Vulkan. You write C# scripts, and the engine does the rest. It helps to know:
Basic C#: classes, methods, fields, if and for.
What a sprite is: an image drawn on screen.
What a scene is: one level or screen of your game.
If you have never programmed, learn the basics of C# first, then come back. The first project tutorial assumes you can read a short script.
How a game gets made in Krotox
Create a project in the Project Hub.
Import art and sound by putting files in your project's Assets folder.
Build a scene by adding entities and attaching components in the editor.
Add behaviour by writing C# scripts and attaching them to entities.
Press Play to test inside the editor, with touch and device-size emulation.
Build and Run on an Android phone from Build Settings, then export a release APK or AAB.
How these docs are organised
Start Here (this section) gets you from zero to a running game.
Krotox Manual explains the engine, the editor, 2D components, physics and deployment.