Pitkänen, Jens2025-09-112025-09-112025-09-11http://hdl.handle.net/10138/601004Game engines are the core software behind video games, with a focus on performance and handling low-level interactions with the operating system. Given those requirements, it is understandable that C++ is a popular choice of programming language for implementing them. Rust is recent programming language targeting similar use cases to C++, providing comparable performance and low-level capabilities, with a novel approach to memory safety via compile-time validation, rather than runtime safety measures like garbage collection. In this thesis, Rust's suitability to the particular use case of game engine development was studied using the Design Science Research Methodology. A prototype game engine was implemented using Rust as the programming language. The design of the prototype was based on existing literature about game engine architecture, existing Rust game engines, and the author's own experiences in hobbyist game development. The development process was documented for later analysis by taking notes and tracking time spent on development tasks. Rust was found to be a viable programming language for game engine development, at least for small games. The memory safety features of Rust were noted as helpful, even with a large amount of unsafe code which required manual review and testing with the Miri interpreter to validate. In particular, even though the allocators and multithreading were implemented as part of the game engine rather than using the standard library, many memory safety related benefits were still observed. Rust's borrows with compile-time validated lifetimes were found to be a good fit for a large part of the dynamic allocations made by the engine, and the safety features around multithreading were found to be useful for implementing a convenient and safe parallelization interface.engCC BY 4.0Rustgame enginegame developmentgame programmingsoftware engineeringURN:NBN:fi:hulib-202509113871pro gradu -tutkielmaTietojenkäsittelytieteen maisteriohjelmaMaster's Programme in Computer ScienceMagisterprogrammet i datavetenskap