Tierlisting the BEST (and worst) GAME ENGINES

we as game developers we always get the one same question what engine should I use and there's no real good answer because it's basically a very big it depends so in today's video we figured we would answer that question in our favorite style of video tier lists we will be taking every engine or we'll have a bunch of engines at least we'll be rating them in terms of how user-friendly are they how expensive are they how many tutorials are there things like that and how deep can you go with them and just basically the pros and cons of everyone then we give them a rank either s tier till F tier depending on how good they are but there's a problem I'm not a programmer I'm the creative director producer whatever everything that's not programming guy here so I brought again my good co-host Thomas who is actually a programmer and who does know what we're talking about so he'll be judging as well I have no idea what his opinion is on any of these genres so maybe we'll be brawling it out by the end of this video in this case I think you should stay tuned to check out that one so I think we can begin right yeah this is like the perfect video to divide and Trigger your audience there's only one good engine guys I won't tell you which one I think we need to start off with unity because of course we're a Unity shop here our game Forge industry is made with unity and you have been working with unity for before so you must be loving this but before you get in let me quickly summarize Unity is probably one of the big three most well-known engines and it's simply also one of the oldest one starters Unity 3D like almost 20 years ago lots of documentation lots of tutorials free to start with and you only have to pay once you reach a certain amount of income Revenue you look at me with this devious smile yeah I think Unity is very interesting topic to talk about because over the past few years I think the entry point to Unity has actually well became harder to get started with it with the packages that unit is releasing like the first thing you open Unity create a new project you're bombarded with the question what render pipeline do you want to use which is very scary for someone just wanting to make a game for some time so because I think if you choose the wrong one is it easy to switch over if I say that I want to make a new RP game and then I realized that I actually don't need urp I mean there are ways and I think I read a stat somewhere that even 80 are still a new projects are still started with a legacy pipeline this is probably an indication that the question is very hard to answer because you have to basically know what features you want and don't want to use up front which is very hard I think another issue is also tutorial wise you now have your tutorials split into two basically the one for legacy shading and stuff like that and the one for urp and generally tutorials are older you can watch the tutorial from five years ago without knowing that oh urp even exists if those people are still using the Legacy pipeline well we basically start off with ranting about Unity but we have of course are very biased because we use Unity Unity for life I'm not sure I would say that but let's also talk about the good things so first of all the the best thing I think that Unity has to offer for a lot of people that are in the software industry already like programmers is that it is in c-sharp this is by far one of the most accessible languages to get started in game development so I think that's a very big plus another thing is that Unity is very flexible you can make 2D games 3D games VR games every different platform you ever dreamed of like I think Unity I don't know if it's still the case but at some point even at support for Tyson yeah I think it's sort of like your watch yeah I think Unity is very easy to export as well you just like select I want webgl I want to export to switch or whatever and it deals with it now another downside of unity is it has a bit of a bad reputation because a lot of games are made with unity because of their signature made with unity intro yeah I think that I once heard that Unity is good enough for bad games so it's really easy to make something horrible with unity that is like shouldn't be released or it's just something that you should keep to your friends to be like hey I made this cute little game rating rating if we put it below like beat here we need to change our engine for our game I feel I was doubting between A and B even with all the things I just said the bad things it has a lot of good things to offer I still think that it should be a just because it does so much there is so much documentation and of course it's going to be a struggle but I'm pretty sure that it's because we use Unity the most we know it's flaws the best so to say so I think there's a bit of a bias there but I feel like if we put unity in a b yeah the rest is going to suffer yeah everything else is gonna have to be a d or an e at least or well not everything but some things yeah okay I can definitely in Aden okay because well Unity should never be a bottleneck for your game this is almost a bite me games guarantee because even the most visual style of games maybe not the most but a lot very high fidelity games can be made in unity the next one is how I started game programming well programming is already one another you can program it you can program indeed I did not touch that at all back then though and that is RPG Maker so you probably know RPG Maker from those I don't know it's like Newgrounds games or like you know the online ones that you could just download a random Exe on the internet it was like made by one guy usually an RPG with like generic Sprites but I think RPG Maker has gotten a lot of crap basically forever since it was made but I think it's also a really good in certain aspects to do oh you already see it trend eurity is also getting a lot of crap RPG Maker is a lot of crap I think to them no engine is perfect but I think what RPG Maker is really good at is if you're not a programmer and you want to focus more on writing stories for example if you're a writer who wants to focus more on how can I make a good narrative experience without having to care about what render pipeline I'm using I want to tell a story I think something like RPG Maker can be really powerful there to just make your story and share it with the world yeah I think for artists this is a very good engine of course the limitations being you basically have to make an RPG well it's not entirely true you can make different genres in it but at that point that's even the point to do it in RPG Maker so I think it's good at what it does but it's a very Niche yeah but I think that it's his strength that they do accept that hey yeah we're RPG Maker downside of course it's not free but it's also not too expensive if I remember correctly yeah if you ever going to earn money this is one of the cheapest options because so you don't have licensing and stuff like that yeah it's just the ones you're just one time I think it's like 100 Euros or something like that something like that and you can make as many games as you want of course you will never be able to charge sixty dollars for a game made in RPG Maker you can you can but nobody will buy it then so your income will be less in that regard and yeah it has that very distinct oh this is an RPG Maker game style but I think if you can really set down a solid story this is really good and it's in the name it doesn't try to be a shooter or whatever it's just we make RPGs and we make them really accessible I would give it for what it is an A or a B tier not that I would change Forge industry to RPG Maker but I think because they do know what they want and they do focus on that it should deserve some credit for that yeah I was actually thinking in b as well I think it's a step below Unity because Unity is just more versatile and stuff and of course we the moment you started TLS you're always going to compare it with different things you just said but I think it's at least a it's a good option for what it is now I said before Unity is one of the big three engines it gives us our second of the big tree in my opinion and that is godo I think the big advantage of Godot is that it's fully free 100 you pay nothing and you pay never anything even if you're very successful it's fully open source so you can very easily also for example change the editor and really change the engine something that something like Unity only has on their Enterprise plans which are ridiculously expensive lies Unity allows you to edit the editor yeah you have custom editors even in 14 yeah but you don't have the engine itself Oh you mean the engine I mean the actual engine yeah the editor you can change but with godo you can actually change the engine yeah I guess which is very powerful if you have I mean I wouldn't recommend it but just the fact that you can do it if you have some really specific use case is part of that openness and that freeness and I think that is really good and Godot has I feel like there aren't any like massive hits with godo but you do have some really good games for example um like potato is one that is quite popular that is made in go though and I think that's a problem though has right now is there's no like Mega hits mate with it there's good games made with it but there's nothing that has had people like them this was made with godo the moment godo well a game made with godo is released in his big hit I think in this will flood to it yeah so I don't think I would call it underrated so to say but I do think that there is still a lot of potential with goto the engine in general as well as Godot I think a few years ago only was Duty I think that was used 3D it's also it exports to I think almost every platform as well mobile console PC I think everything is supported language wise it does also support c-sharp it supports yeah I think mostly they use godoskia they have got those script which is based on goal which is also a programming language outside of games but is very much more Niche where do we put it this is this is such a lame choice but I think it should also be a it should also be a man we're gonna have like all A's no there are definitely some there are better and worse ones yeah I think you're dope I mean honestly if people ask me what game engine do you recommend I am like it depends but go for Koto or Unity it's generally my answer so I do see them as equals in certain regards yeah I think almost every game engine has a lot of parallels between them so no matter which one you choose if you go from Godot to Unity or Unity you go to Godot there are some Concepts that remain the same like you have different names okay but this is not a choice you should make for the rest of your life it's not like getting married the next engine on our list is Game Maker studio also when I started as a game maker with RPG Studio I also looked into things like game maker Studio back then I was just a Wii lab and I already found this a bit too complicated bear in mind I was very young back then and I never really touched it again for that while but it is something that is used a lot by beginning game developers why because they say that start free now a little bit of a lie if you actually want to make a game as an indie and sell it you need to be able to export it you can only export the free tier to their own platform which we don't want and then it's ten dollars a month or between five to ten depending on like what features you need and what makes it so enticing is that you don't need to program you can program but it's all in you know a visual drag and drop that is really made for I'm making my first game and I mean I don't have a lot of experience with game maker Studio but you have like bold for Unity you have blueprints for unreal what makes it so I think the difference is that bolts and blueprints are more advanced this is really like if I push this button go up like three tiles or whatever so it's really made for very simple games a bit like if you want an if if RPG Maker Studio doesn't fit your needs if you don't want an RPG you can probably make it in game maker Studio as well very easily or like I press this mouse button and I will fire there will simply be a block called fire that can automatically interact with a pre-made gun element things like that so it's like a sugar recording of actual code while bolt is it's a bit like how you have highness of code yeah or like how you have python as the programming language and then you have scratch which is a layer on top of python that is like very easy to just get people started when they're very young with it but I'm not the biggest fan of it because first he's here like hyping it up oh it's very easy to use things like that I don't like their licensing model and I don't like how I think this is something that in like one month of game maker Studio you should learn enough like to already move on to an extension so I think that game maker studio if you can skip it in your game development process and just go immediately to one of our eight-year engines whatever they may be at the end of the video I think that would be better than sitting in here I would give it a c or a B it sounds the way you explain it to me at least it sounds like a learning tool more than an actual production ready game that's basically what it comes down to for me though about the licensing model I don't think it's necessarily bad okay you have to pay to get started really from audience yeah or at least like Unity is free to get started with and only once you've reached success you need to pay yeah true 100 000 yeah if you whereas with game maker Studio you have to pay 10 bucks a month even if you have zero sales I had actually now that you mentioned it it's for if if I see it game maker studio is a learning tool primarily then it's actually pretty uh licensing models only the most engaging content here it's pretty we put it at see them I don't know a lot about it but I would maybe even consider putting it lower maybe honestly I don't it doesn't sound bad per se but it sounds very Niche because if you get started you outgrow it in a month you have to pay for it it doesn't sound enticing to me yeah indeed whereas RPG Maker they own up to their name they're really focused on one thing whereas game maker it's like you can make anything with it it's just it's not gonna be good I think it's only 2D though um I think you can like force it for some 3D stuff but it's like with their pre-made assets and things like things like that I would put it in D from what I hear we'll put it indeed here then also it's a lot more controversial if you have bad things so people write in the comments game maker studio is the best thing ever if you make good games with game maker Studio I want to see those because I don't believe it comment down below with the links to your steam page or whatever and we'll just dislike your comments YouTube reflection next up is Unreal Engine another one the last one of our big tree so to say I have never worked with this so you'll probably know more about it than me what I know about unreal is that it's more for you know that Ferry whereas Unity is great for 2D games for example and like lower poly ones a lot of the very high like that's what I feel like unreal is like photorealism also if you look at stuff like how they actually integrate with like Cinema so for example mandalorians all of those scenes are filmed with Unreal Engine but I don't know how have you ever touched it how do you know how I know a bit about the concepts as well honestly this is very against my own shop I think unreal is better than unity in a lot of key different ways before you no no problem were you lash out at me let me explain why first of all pure High Fidelity wise nanite and Lumen their new systems are super impressive like a couple couple of weeks ago they showed the rivian demo it is very impressive technical technical spilling with possible generation of levels yeah I think it's insane if you want bleeding edge like stuff also like Houdini for example for procedural generation I don't think there are really anything that can match that Fidelity and that performance in unity in an easy way without really heavily having to edit the engine yeah out of the box unreal gives you way higher Fidelity visuals because they do a lot of things for you already but I also think for even lower volume uh games they are not bad at all like I think they are actually underrated for indie games because first of all I just think their pricing model is just plain better than Unity it's a percentage based instead of the seats right yeah but also I think it's the first million is yeah you just use it as you want and before you're at a million with as an indie Dev it's free complete free and if you then put it on epic game store instead of steam it's always free as well because it's the integration between epic games who make Unreal Engine and their own store yeah on top of that even for beginners okay the the coding language I think it's C plus plus uh C plus plus yeah is okay that's more challenging than c-sharp generally speaking because it's a lower level language than c-sharp but that also allows you to get those crazy good performance numbers for that Fidelity and things exactly but even though Unity has bold blueprints in unit in unreal basically negates the low language that you had a lower level language that you have and yeah I think even don't quote me on this but I think bolt basically just came around after unreal showed how good the visual interface is basically bolt was an asset bait yeah at the asset store and unity is not like damn they made something cool let's buy this asset and now it's unity's property which is I mean I guess not bad but I really I think this should be a steer actually I I would agree with you indeed yeah I think this is Esther it's just we don't use it because it didn't fully fit our use case and we didn't have the experience with it as much but I think if you are beginning any developer and you're asking yourself the question what should I begin with from the three big engines I think that unreal especially if you are looking into maybe if you have some more experienced modelers in your team that can make some high poly models I think it can really be worth it to go for unreal as well yeah I think it shouldn't be your go-to choice I think you should really pick between spoilers unreal godo and unity but think about it very carefully also think about the future because we mainly chose Unity because I had a lot of experience with it already and that's literally it I think in the end if you really want you can just like blind pick an engine and like you'll probably be able to make a game out of it but I think unreal can really offer Extra Value also one more thing I think about unreal gives you grants for making games so I don't know the full but basically if you make a game with Unreal Engine you can pitch it and they will give you between 25 000 and right between 5 000 and I think 50 000 US dollars or even more just for making it in unreal if they select you so it's basically free funding our next engine is one that I put in because I don't have any experience with it but I see it online often mentioned as oh this is one of those very easy engines to get started without code and that is construct 3. honestly I haven't worked that much with it and first class I don't really like it that much because a it costs 18 Euros a month there is a free version but you can barely do anything in the free version you can't do debugging you have the custom loading screens of course such as Unity as well that you come to you're limited in a lot of unity allows you to do custom learnings oh I mean splash screen sorry yeah because I think in Conflict it's actually loading screens right that they mentioned like just loading a level yeah yeah because constructs it's something you needed it like 10 years ago and it's probably the best thing that I stopped doing is limit access to certain features yeah I don't like it when you have this engine that is half an engine so maybe let me quickly touch back on what is construct exactly they focus mainly on very simple no codes mobile and web games so you don't have to program and if you do have to or if you do want to program hold on your horse it's JavaScript which is not an end like a language I would use for making games in so that's already that I'm like but it really shows it's made for like flash well not flash games but like HTML5 web games I haven't worked with it from what you just described it if I had to pick it myself I would never recommend it I would go for it FTR I haven't you worked it I might have triggered some of you guys well but um I think it is worse than gaming because it costs twice as much as game taker Studio as well but it also sounds more I don't know about that you limit yourself you you have the program in JavaScript you don't have typing yeah and you have to you have to pay if you wanna so their their pitches web games Android and iOS Android and iOS you have to pay for so you can only make web games with a free one F tier okay I do agree as well don't I don't recommend this just go for first of all if you have if anything ever tells you to learn JavaScript you run away that's what JavaScript itself isn't so bad if you use typescript which is a superset JavaScript in itself I'm not a fan of yeah let's stay away from this one and let's stay away from the next one as well which is your own engine I think it's a oh oh I think it's a bad idea that's what I've been saying basically throughout all of the videos we've made the pause here as well making your own engine so what does that mean you actually low level program in C or C plus plus you open your program opengl physics basically everything you make from scratch there's no there's is no editor your editor is just your code and you just compile it all in C plus plus and I do understand the appeal one it's free whatever but that's not really the reason you built your own engine you have ultimate control over your game and this means that if you have something that you're like this is a really cool mechanic but all of the other engines don't allow me to do it screw it I'll do it myself my tiny brain can't even think of a mechanic that's the big three can't do so I think this is a terrible option but I think that's that's where you're right the thing is we know what the engines do but if you're like ideating your first game and you're like oh I'm gonna have these really cool mechanics and you can't find a Unity tutorial or whatever on YouTube you're like it must be impossible but what's the chance you you don't realize something can be done in an engine but you do know how to make your own engine I think it's also with onions you have to keep in mind it's also part of the fun so to say that's true you do learn a lot about computers programming memory management and things like that from making your own engine I think is it horrible if you want to commercialize a game yeah I think this is a great learning tool I think it's also a big challenge so if you're into that you can do it yeah but for a commercial game I wouldn't I think if you're more like I'm a programmer and I really want to get a job in the games industry as a programmer having something like I've written my own engine I control memory registers with my bare hands can really give you a plus in knowing how everything works I would put it at like an D or an E I would put it I wouldn't put it FB no I wouldn't put it either because I just heard about JavaScript but I would put it in E because from what I've heard game maker Studio has some drawbacks sure about the pricing and stuff but it also has some key advantages it's a very big task you have a lot of time that you will lose creating your own engine yeah just being able to display like a blank screen will already take a very long time you're recreating Reinventing the wheel so I would put it in e our next engine isn't really an engine um this one I kind of threw in because bamboozle when you go to me and you say I want to make games I think that you can actually learn a lot about making fun video games and making engaging games by making board games and what you need for that as your engine is basically a pen and paper and if you can draw whatever but this allows you to really quickly ideate how do mechanics work because we've actually played around internally with like some games as well like a board game and there we can be like oh this isn't working instead of me having to reprogram actual lines of code I just tell them hey from now on this feed like this card does this thing and that's basically the reprogramming and this really allows you to very quickly find out what is fun in a game basically and I think that okay commercially it's not the best but I think if you want to learn how to make a game it's a lot easier if you want to make it a success commercially you'll need to have a publisher different to a video game publisher but they will have to you have to print physical Goods which is always a hassle you have to ship them and you have people on Kickstarter and such that are successful in doing it but it's a lot more stress of course than making a video game I I mainly look at this from a learning tool because like you said it's very easy to iterate through IDs and if I look at what we already put together the bottom three the highest rated one I also evaluated as a learning tool and I think board games are better I think this is a b I'll just say it I I was doubting between B and C mainly because you won't you it's good to learn it's good to get ideas mechanics it's also really fun because you play it it's always a multiplayer game so you always you need friends I'm sorry if you don't have friends but ideally you'll need to have friends the biggest downside is it's not commercial it is but it's very hard compared to making a game so they all have their challenges that's the main reason I think more is C actually because at least with game maker you can easily distribute it we'll do like our lost tier list it's not a full B it's a B minus or a c plus something like that but I think in general it's a really good exercise even if you're already a Game Dev trying to make a board game in like a weekend or something try to come up with a cool mechanic and turn it into a board game and maybe you even find some inspiration for a new game through it that you can translate from the board to the computer is this foreshadowing until a few months until you learn about our next game who knows who knows stay tuned subscribe down below this next engine I found and I didn't even know it was free but it has a similar model to Unity and unreal and that is cryengine so known for games such as crisis and Star Citizen are both made in cryengine and they apparently released their engine to Indie developers and it's free to use until your first five thousand dollars of Revenue five five thousand five thousand yeah okay not that much after which you have to pay five percent royalties and when we begin I was looking there are no tutorials for this like there's one like playlist from cry itself but I think that cryengine doesn't really focus on Indie developers I think crying just looks at those double A games or such that are like they don't have the full budget of a fully custom in-house engine such as frostbite for example that EA uses but they do need something that is very expandable and I think what cryengine is doing is more releasing it for free well releasing it for free so that they can train developers to use it to then go to those double A Studios and make those games and Crimson is very powerful I think Crow engine is even more graphically beautiful than unreal in a lot of cases but it's hella hard that's all I can say about it really especially because there's also no documentation for it do you know when they made it free I have no idea okay because if you're an indie game developer I don't think this is looking sexy at all to you mainly because you basically need documentation unreal has great documentation Unity has acceptable documentation but a butt load of tutorials on YouTube Godot has I don't know about the documentation but at least there are quite a bit of tutorials again I don't think this is a very common Choice which in my opinion is a very big risk if you have because you basically don't have any guidelines what I think it's as bad as JavaScript no it's also better than making your own engine I feel yeah but I also think it's worse than game maker studio so because at least with game maker Studio you can make something you get some yeah you get some like crumbs breadcrumbs and you can find your way through the forest but from what I hear here is like yeah you're basically starving you don't get bread crumbs so uh an e Plus or a D minus is what you would say I mean yes I would I would I was thinking about the D as well so but put it below game maker studio also five thousand dollars yeah if you're oh that's a pretty uh amount yeah do you have to pay like a percentage Yeah five percent okay that's also a lot like if you sell somewhat well Unity is a fixed price after one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand depending on uh your license and unreal I think I think a realistic like one of the best deals in games uh game engines right now yeah so this final one I didn't work with myself but one of the other developers or team William actually told me to put this on the list which is phaser never heard of it perfect we'll I'll give you some quick details it's made for HTML5 games so purely web games really and it's fully free as well it's open source and you're gonna like this it supports JavaScript create and typescript so at least better you have a bit more of a real programming language there and you can tell its focus is not really on making in-depth games but you know once again it's for like flash games or one thing that they also advertise themselves is you know those promotional games where you have to like catch the chicken wings in the bucket to win a free like Discount Wheel voucher or whatever things like that is also something that they really try to get into the ad for game space and I think as an Indian developer this is maybe something that if you're like oh I'm already bored of unity I've made like so many games I want to just try something new I want to enter a game Jam I want to try a new engine and just like handicap myself a bit or not handicap but challenge myself I think that phaser is a really good one I don't think I couldn't find anything like inherently bad with the engine that's the thing is it you said it's free is it also open source it's open source as well yeah so it's on GitHub you can Fork the engine entirely as well because in the end it's HTML5 there have a web editor or you can have a local editor as well so it's it's I think in that regard it's quite good but I'm pretty sure that unless you are an ad agency making those advertisement games I don't think you'll ever make money with one of the these games unless you like put in a bunch of ads and get it like I don't know on like some eight-year-old kid's iPad so I would put it because I don't know do you have anything to add I'm just thinking where I would put it from what I just heard I would put it as a c it's not great but like the pitch is pretty good that they have the thing is I want to put it at a date because I think it's still worse than game maker Studio but better than frostbite but now I regret putting game maker Studio you want to put game maker Studio maybe like d plus no maybe in C and then phaser above frostbite and try engine yeah yeah well we'll cry into the first bite and then phaser above like that yeah but from from this mess that you're seeing on your screen right now only the finest yeah game maker Studio should be higher yeah I think we we underestimate a little bit there I think we have a new wrap up but honestly everything a lot of these topics were also just for fun honestly if you're making a new game unreal go to Unity go to the timestamps if you forgot why they're great all of them are great and in general I think you can't miss with those yeah even if you pick something that we label this F or ET or whatever you can still make a great game with it this is an opinion this is also this is just us fooling around in the end yeah because we also don't have a lot of experience with all of these engines so it's hard to judge them fairly so it's just first opinions mostly I think no matter which one you choose if you are a good developer you can make any one of these work and if you are going to start on your Indie Journey you want to be sure to subscribe to our Channel as we make this kind of cool content twice a week where we talk about Game Dev tips and tricks or simply more fun content as this or you can actually follow along the progress of our own games as well we're currently working on the resource management and automation game Forge industry you can wishlist that one down below and there will be an upcoming steam nextfest demo as well that you'll be able to play for free for free indeed so in general if you want to learn more about game development simply subscribe it's a win-win for both of us you get this cool content and we get your subscribe your subscription and your watch time that's all I have for this video we'll be back in the next one and until then I would say good luck developing with whatever engine you choose maybe let us know what engine are you using have you got any struggles with a certain engine do you hardly disagree with some of our picks do you think that your own engine is estier I'm really curious to hear about that one so let us know still and then we'll see you guys in the next video bye

Channel: BiteMe Games

Views: 185,189

Keywords: gamedev, indie, indie developer, game development, unity, c#, blender, game design, game studio, devlog, development, startup, forge industry, flega, steam

Id: YUtb-IRJiP8

Length: 33min 50sec (2030 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023