[2] It can be used to write games for Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, Android, and iOS (currently in alpha testing).

jMonkeyEngine helps to improve the lack of full featured graphics engines written in Java.

When the original core developers gradually discontinued work on the project throughout the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, Version 2.0 had not yet been made officially stable.

The first preview release of jME3 in early 2009 drew positive attention[10] from many members in the community, and the majority agreed that this new branch would be the official successor to jME 2.0.

Ardor3D began life on September 23, 2008, as a fork from jMonkeyEngine by Joshua Slack and Rikard Herlitz due to what they perceived as irreconcilable issues with naming, provenance, licensing, and community structure in that engine,[37] as well as a desire to back a powerful open-source Java engine with organized corporate support.

On March 11, 2014, Joshua Slack announced that the project would be abandoned, although the software itself would remain under zlib license and continue to be freely available.