my experience with play-clj has been that its focus is highly presentational

ive done what you are speaking to with raw libgdx, but that was all in java

i assume the main gain you want here is clojure

yes

what I described would be possible with libgdx? Could you tell me which parts of the API to look at?

certainly possible. depends on if you are looking for simple 2d physics or more robust 3d physics

i used the bullet wrapper in 3d and just kind of gutted any rendering step of my game loop

now keep in mind, these are game physics. if you want real accurate physics you are better off looking elsewhere

game physics are good at making concesions that look real but aren't neccesarily physically accurate

https://xoppa.github.io/blog/using-the-libgdx-3d-physics-bullet-wrapper-part1/ xoppa has a lot of stuff on the 3d layer