Gideros is a free, open-source game development platform that helps creators build, test, and publish games for multiple platforms using Lua. Designed to make game development accessible, it combines a lightweight IDE with desktop and device players, a texture packer, a font creator, and support for third-party tools. Developers can test projects on real devices over Wi-Fi in about a second, without an export-and-deploy cycle.

Built on C/C++ and OpenGL, Gideros delivers native-speed performance while offering a clean object-oriented approach for reusable code. Its capabilities include working with images, text, shapes, sprites, sound, animation, click events, and user input, as well as saving data. Plugins let developers extend the platform or integrate existing C, C++, Java, and Objective-C code through Lua; many open-source plugins are available. Gideros also supports automatic screen scaling and image-resolution selection to simplify projects across devices and screen sizes. With a learning-friendly workflow and fast iteration, the platform aims to help developers create games efficiently, from early experiments to cross-platform releases.