RocketWerkz' C# framework 'BRUTAL' is now available to all developers

Bryant Francis,Senior Editor,GameDeveloper.com

October 19, 2026

schedule3 Min ReadImage via Rocketwerkz

Kitten Space Agency and Icarus developer RocketWerkz and game platform operator Ahwoo—both founded by veteran DayZ developer Dean Hall—have announced the open source release of the game development framework known as "BRUTAL," a C#-based framework that offers developers another alternative to third-party game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, or even Godot.

The framework combines C# and .NET with C++ libraries and low-level graphics access, acting as a foundation for developers to build and maintain their own development tools.

Such options have become more attractive after major debacles like the Unity Runtime Fee saga and Epic Games' announcement that it would be depreciating Unreal's Blueprints function have given some developers cause for concern about the stability of their tech stacks. RocketWerkz has been personally using BRUTAL in the development of Kitten Space Agency, but developers looking for an external case study should check out the most recent update to Ludeon Studios' Rimworld. The developer announced last week that it had ported the game off of Unity onto a new game engine called "Waylith," which it says offers players better performance and a faster start-up time than seen in previous versions.

The framework is free to use in commercial games with no royalty requirements, though the open source license does require developers to provide attribution and display a logo before gameplay when players load your game.

Developers should know that adopting BRUTAL won't be as simple as picking up other beloved open-source engines like Godot. BRUTAL is a programming framework that can be a foundation for proprietary game engines or simply a means to make your game from scratch—a more challenging feat that requires a willingness to embrace the nuts and bolts of a programming language like C#.

In 2025, Hall and Kerbal Space Program creator Felipe Falanghe explained to Game Developer that they found working with BRUTAL to be much easier thanks to advancements in large language models (LLMs). The AI tools allowed Hall, Falaghe, and their colleagues to ask questions about C# libraries and Vulkan documentation, which are both "highly structured, with very clear syntax."

"An LLM is essentially tokenizing language, then putting masses of vectors around that to build linkages between those tokens," Hall said at the time. "What could be better than a highly-structured, in fact brutally structured language?"

The pair said this process was not the same as "vibe-coding," which automatically generates code based on user prompts.

Will more developers make their own game engines?

Ludeon Studios' decision to port Rimworld off of Unity and onto a custom engine powered by BRUTAL also serves as a case study for Hall's belief that programming frameworks, rather than third-party engines, are the future of game development. Reliance on third-party engines has long been a bugbear for Hall, who called out Unity in 2025 for allegedly threatening to terminate Rocketwerkz' license over what he said were false accusations of violating its terms of service.

"You are only as independent as your tools are," he said in a statement accompanying the announcement, saying that while not every developer should have to make their own game engine, every developer should have "the option to do so."

This notion has certainly struck a chord with developers like Mega Crit in the last few years, which switched from Unity to Godot while making Slay the Spire, and barely lost any development time in the process.

Still, don't expect BRUTAL to become the definitive framework for game development anytime soon. Hall told Game Developer last year that he'd prefer it if other developers created their own "simpler" frameworks following a similar approach, rather than trying to turn the open source framework into an industry standard.

"BRUTAL was made to deliver a very specific, kind of hard-to-make game where you need to sit down and ask a whole bunch of questions [about how it works]," he said—an approach that some developers will certainly welcome with open arms. Others will understandably tap out of such a daunting task.

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About the Author

Bryant Francis

Senior Editor, GameDeveloper.com

Bryant Francis is a writer, journalist, and narrative designer based in Boston, MA. He currently writes for Game Developer, a leading B2B publication for the video game industry. His credits include Proxy Studios' 4X strategy game Zephon, Iron Anchor Studios' Down With The Ship, and Amplitude Studio's 2017 game Endless Space 2.

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