[2] Its purpose and design is similar to that of OGRE with the primary goal being lightweight for next-generation video games.

[5] The major part of the graphics engine was originally written for the indie group pyropix and development is now continued at the University of Augsburg.

The engine is primarily designed for an object-oriented approach to scene rendering.

[6][7] It also features a Scene Editor that can design shaders with support for plugins including physics.

[10] The engine contains a number of bindings to various languages including C#, Java, Python, Lua, Squirrel, GML (GMHorde3D)[11] The following commercial games use the Horde3D engine:[2]