Comparing Different Game Engines

Unity is a game engine initially released back in 2005, since then it has proven it's worth in the gaming industry by being the engine of many successful games such as Hollow Knight, Subnautica and City Skylines. This industry success has also made unity a massive target for tutorials and support, meaning that many of the things a new game developer would like to do can be done through easy to follow tutorials often making use of c# rather than more complex languages such as c++ and machine code. The game engine also makes use of Visual Studio for programming purposes, a strong and reliable IDE that has many features such as automatic error checks and auto complete. Just like Unreal engine, Unity has various tools to create with, including a vast array of 2D game creation tools alongside the normal 3D tools most new developers would use. Finally, Unity is free to download and use under a personal license, with an optional upgrade to the pro version being needed for deploying to consoles, this works out very expensive at 2200 dollars a year but for a small PC game shouldn't really be needed

Language - c# 

Cost - 0

Support - Lots

Experience - None

Unreal Engine is a game engine with a heavy emphasis on detailed lighting, graphics and a rather new type of programming called blueprints. These blueprints are often easier to understand than normal code counterparts and are a good way to program in c++ without actually having to write it all out with proper syntax. Games like Sea Of Thieves, Ark Survival Evolved and Fortnite are some examples of highly known Unreal engine games, with them being known for their great graphical quality as well as smooth gameplay. These games and many others have made Unreal Engine a very trustworthy engine, and the main competitor of Unity.

Pricing for Unreal Engine is free until publishing, when the game earns over 1 million dollars there will be a 5% royalty fee to Epic Games for using the Engine, though this shouldn't be an issue as I don't intend to charge for the game. The engine being very cheap and graphically powerful means that many choose it over Unity, this of course also means (when coupled with easier programming through blueprints) that there are plenty of different tutorials and support sites if there are any issues, since I have experience with this engine I reckon I could maintain a decent speed when working with it.

Language - c++ / Blueprints

Cost - 0 (Until 5% Royalties)

Support - Lots

Experience - Some

Finally there's Godot. Godot is an outlier amongst game engines as there aren't really many famous games made with the engine. The only one I could really recognise as a game student was Buckshot Roulette, and after watching a showcase from 2024 I'm convinced that many other amazing games have been made using the engine. Unfortunately the game engine not having many popular games doesn't really give me a lot of confidence in how strong and versatile it is, it also makes me feel like the amount of support and tutorials on this engine when compared with Unity and Unreal Engine will be practically nothing. The programming language for Godot is GDScript, a modified version of Python. Despite Python being a very simple language, I don't have much experience in it and the engine comes with no other options if you find yourself desperate to use C Sharp or c++. One of the good things Godot has going for it is that there are no strings attached in terms of what you make being yours or having to pay any royalties. No matter how much you make from a game created in Godot, there will never be a royalties payment to them or any other charge as Godot itself is totally free. This might change with different assets used but the base app has no payments at any point.

Language - GDScript

Cost - 0 (No Royalties)

Support - Limited

Experience - None