Please select from the poll, program needs to work on the Surface Pro and Surface RT.

I have discounted SFML as it is not compatible with Windows RT.

Thanks,

Vanz

Other : MonoGame (http://www.monogame.net/)

I'm glad I asked, hadn't heard of that...

Other : MonoGame (http://www.monogame.net/)

I'm glad I asked, hadn't heard of that...

Except... the question states C++...

Ultimately it depends on the type of game you want to make... I'm assuming more than a word puzzle game.

With that said, D3D without a doubt.

D2D is essentially just a wrapper for D3D, with some overhead - slightly lowering performance and increasing battery life; both of which are serious considerations on an ARM device. Other technologies aren't up to scratch performance wise - I own an RT and it can seriously struggle with things it should be able to do quite admirably, which I assume is down to RAD tools rather than lower level ones.

Direct 3D

If you're not doing anything fancy, you might want to try HTML5, granted it's javascript.

To be a bit more on topic, I'd refrain from doing graphics in XAML, but it might be a way to do the UI screens with a game window that is full D3D.

I'd have trouble targeting the Surface at all given the miserable state of affairs regarding OpenGL on the platform. Granted, the Surface Pro runs x86 Windows so installing drivers is an option (though reportedly they're terrible), but supporting the RT means you must duplicate your effort and maintain D3D + OpenGL render paths to support Android and iOS.

And really, that sounds like a lot of work in order to release on a proprietary platform that doesn't move a lot of software.

I'd use GDI+ or Direct2D or SDL for 2D graphics on windows 8.1