One of the major strengths of the BASIC programming languages has always been their no-fuss setup and rich set of commands for operations that would take considerably more work in a bare-bones language like C. MoonBASIC continues this legacy with a BASIC variant optimized for both 2D and 3D game development.
Included in the package are Raylib, Box2D, and Jolt, whose functionality is exposed via over 4,200 commands in their respective namespaces. You can also download a whole IDE package based around VS Code, use it on the command line, or add it to an existing VS Code installation.
A quick glance at the ‘getting started‘ guide gives a pretty good idea of what to expect of MoonBASIC, including a range of custom language additions and support for PBR materials, dynamic lighting, and other modern game engine features.
Whether writing a game in BASIC was on your bingo card for this year or not, it might be worth taking a look to see whether it’s your jam. After all, if BASIC was good enough for both AI and game development in the 1980s, surely it can be used for complex games in 2026.
For every excuse for using badic is an unlimited supply of horrid downsides
Its a terrible programing language from the bygone era where Camel cigarettes were doctor approved
It’s CRAP let it go
Just caught the part where “if its good enough for the 80’s” yea in 1979 I was driven home from the hospital in a station wagon with a steel dashboard and no seat belts l, on my mother’s lap
It was good enough lol!
I still love basic though…
It too me a ling time to figure out #include, make files and all those shenanigans. Basic has always been good for a quick prototype, less complex than Python or C. I like what they have done.