Horizon vs OpenRA
Horizon and OpenRA are both game engine software. Horizon is open source under MIT, with 6.1k GitHub stars. OpenRA is open source under GPL-3.0, with 18k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Horizon when
- You are curious about a faster Minecraft-compatible client and comfortable with alpha software.
- Pick OpenRA when
- You want to play or mod classic Command & Conquer games on modern systems.
Side by side
An unofficial from-scratch rewrite of Minecraft: Java Edition in Rust, checked for identical behaviour against the original game with differential tests.
A free engine that recreates and modernises classic Westwood strategy games such as Command & Conquer and Red Alert, with online multiplayer and modding.
Created in October 2026, unofficial, and could face legal or compatibility problems with Mojang.
Releases are infrequent, with the last stable one in March 2025, and it is GPL-3.0.
Experimental
Production-ready
Desktop app (both)
Rust, wgpu and Vulkan
C#, Lua, SDL and OpenGL
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
6.1k GitHub stars
18k GitHub stars
New: started 1 month ago, latest release v0.2.97.
Established: started 16 years ago, latest release release-20250330.
More game engines
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.