Torque 2D Engine (T2D) was the brain child of Melvin May, who conceived it as a way to quickly and easily create a simple 2D side-scroller game. As he continued to work on it, it grew to become a generalized solution for the creation of 2D games.

Utilizing the original Torque Game Engine as a base, T2D can not only be used to create intersting and powerful 2D games, it can also be integrated with the original Torque Game engine to allow you to place 2D games INSIDE your 3D games!.

But while embedding a 2D sub-game is the goal of many, the actual power of the 2D engine should now be overlooked. The popularity of "retro" titles, and the growing power of phone based games means that the Torque 2D engine is poinsed to take you to new and potentially very lucarative markets.

So much for my sales pitch!

My original interest in Torque 2D was as a platform for a GarageGames hosted event called, Game in a Day. In this for fun competition, teams of people try to create an entire game in a single day! The results are generally published on the GarageGames website shortly after the competition ends, although some entries have gone on to be modified into complete selling titles.

A bit of buzz after the completion of the recent GarageGames developer conference centered on the use of a new version of T2D. The unreleased version was used to demonstrate a number of points in a presentation and people there were quick to pick up on the fact that a new version of the engine may be in the offing soon. GarageGames, with typical modesty said nothing.

On a personal note. I am still working on the game design for a game in a day entry at an unspecified point in the future. From looking at a few of the contests it is clear that those who made the most progress were the ones who had a clear outline of what they wanted to accomplish, had tasks set up for all the people on the team, and had the most productive communication.