Top 5 Game Development Engines for Developers

By NIIT Editorial

Published on 18/01/2021

5 minutes

Game engines are an unmissable component for software developers engaged in game development. They offer the toolkits required to create video games in the first place. The choice of which game engine to use is guided by factors such as:

Primary programming language
Operating system compatibility
Vendor-neutral or proprietary
Track record

In this article, we’ll be listing our pick of top 5 game engines you should seriously consider working on.

Which Game Engine to Use?

A study by renowned video game site Gamasutra discovered that Unreal and Unity are the two most popular game engines in the developer community. Below we list the reasons for their success and the subsequent 3 engines as per market share:

Unreal Engine

It was unveiled in 1998 through its first-person shooting game namesake. Developers can target a variety of genres such as platformers, MMORPGs as well as fighting games among others. Based on C++, Unreal has been adopted in non-gaming industries as well.

It comes with a version control system, with state of the art Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as well as graphic tools. Its parent company, Epic Games unveiled its latest release, Unreal Engine 4, in 2014 that developers can leverage through a subscription model. The source code is free to download through GitHub. Commercial success under its belt includes games like Mortal Kombat (mobile version), and Fortnite: Save the World.

Unity

Launched initially as a Mac-OS only game engine at Apple Inc’s Worldwide Developer Conference, it is in its current version a cross-compatible game engine. Although based primarily on C++, it offers wide-ranging development capabilities to create 2D, 2.5D, and 3D games. Unity has been readily adopted by industries other than gaming some of which include the automotive sector, construction, engineering, and architecture. First released in 2005, its latest release was open for use in January 2021 to the public.

Amazon Lumberyard

The engine was developed by Amazon, after licensing it from CryEngine. Developers working on the platform get the added advantage of it being integrated with Amazon Web Services which allows them to host games on Amazon’s servers. In addition to that, you can even live stream games on Twitch through Amazon Lumberyard.

The engine offers user-friendly features such as Twitch ChatPlay opening up the option for stream viewers to affect the outcome of the game. It supports all major gaming platforms such as Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS, and Android.

Godot

Godot was released under the MIT license in 2014 and is an open-source, free-to-use platform. In other words, developers have the freedom to change engine specifications as they like and sell games. What separates Godot from its contemporaries is its approach to approach to scene architecture and node specifications used to enhance game functions. It can be used to create games for the web, mobile as well as PC.

Phaser

Phaser was launched in 2013 and is predominantly a 2D game engine. It is a fan-favorite for programmers who work linearly towards creating mobile or browser-based games. Game engines tend to go through multiple releases, as they should, which often impacts their core fundamentals. From that view, Phaser is highly stable and dependable partly due to being based on web development technologies. With the right customizations, developers can even render games in the MMPORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) format.