UPDATE to the UPDATE:
Unity has backpedalled really hard, and actually made things better in certain cases. Yet they have still shattered a lot of trust in the Engine. I think at this point it's definitely a B instead of an A.

Why Unity isn't pure evil anymore (but not amazing either):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1F_vc2W_kc

UPDATE (outdated):
So, Unity has been doing some weird moves lately, and I cannot in good faith standby the decision anymore to give it an A, it has shifted more to a B or even C with latest events.


If you want console support, go for Unreal, if you want something a little easier, aimed at PC/Mobile, Godot is the way to go.

Why no more Unity?
https://youtu.be/4AvPhoU9rGA

I remember using Game Maker in high school. I had no idea it was used to make Hotline Miami.

"Unity for life" ... Ooof. That one didn't age too well.

my first game engine was powerpoint 😅 made some point and click adventures during class.

Interesting to include board games, I think nowadays a lot of people forget about them and it actually could give you a lot of new perspectives you can utilize in the game making process. Good watch guys! :))

GDevelop 5 is a good option for beginners. It's a no-code game engine, basically a free alternative to Construct. Pretty good for fast prototyping as well.

Creating my own engine (or in my case, being part of a group to create one), just for the experience really really helped me. Like you already said, it teaches you about the logical foundation of an engine and tremendously boosts your knowledge about commonly used systems in popular engines. Just by having many years of programming experience and the knowledge from building an engine, I learned to build a reasonably solid game within 2 weeks (1 week learning through experimentation, 1 week gamejam) with unity.

If you do have the intention of learning everything there is to it and you wanna feel good about knowing whats actually going on behind the scenes, building an engine really boosts your progress even if it takes more time to actually get into making games. And keep it simple, I recommend just doing 2D instead 3D, because the problems you gonna solve are similar, but 3D is like a cubic factor more work to do, even if its  'just' one extra dimension. Learn about concepts, not any universally applicable world-fomula!

Thanks for the video and actually mentioning the "create your own engine"-part, I have rarely seen this done right :)

The game maker section of this was crazy. Treating it like it’s not a real option? Undertale, hyperlight drifter, hotline Miami and many other very successful games were made in game maker. I don’t use game maker, I just think the take that it’s “more of a learning tool” is wild.

There is also Unigine, O3DE, and Several frameworks that would allow to make a custom engine "easier" like Ogre and Raylib.

A one year update of this video would be awesome :) Many engines have changed a lot in that time.

Great video. A couple of my games are made with Phaser due to wanting to make web-based games like a virtual world, but I think its more properly labeled as a framework and not an engine. You can also use existing tools like Electron or the new Rust-based Tauri to wrap your game as its own desktop application, and distribute it that way. I believe that is what the dev(s) of Vampire Survivors did (however they re-created it in Unity for their Nintendo Switch version).

That route is probably not recommended for someone just getting into game development, though. For them, I would really recommend Godot due to the recent pricing changes with Unity and more recently Epic's changes. Even though these pricing changes don't affect indie devs I think the openness of Godot really protects you from anything that may happen in the future- and Godot is perfectly capable of accomplishing anything a beginner could possibly want.

I feel like Construct should at least be a C or even a B. I think a lot of the reason people look down on Construct a bit is because its an engine a lot of kids are introduced to first so its hard to find a lot of games make in Construct that show a lot of polish. I prefer Godot by miles but its completely possible to make a good game in Construct, and like others have mentioned its also a really cool tool for making a sort of mockup game. The way it handles code can be pretty limiting but I think as far as code that works like a puzzle goes it handles it well. Its basically Scratch that's all beefed up and I think that's honestly something that makes it kinda cool. I won't ever go back to using it but using Construct in high school was fun.

The only point I disagree with heavily is GameMaker. As someone that has published games on Unity, GMS, and even GameSalad when I was starting out. When it comes to 2D games Gamemaker is the king of 2D. It has come a long way, is extremely powerful, and very flexible if you learn their GML language. Which is you know Python you pretty much know GML. I primarily use Unity because you can learn one engine and create anything from simple 2D up to complex 3D games, but if I was a 2D dev, I would stick with GameMaker. Everything you need is all provided and simple to use. You can create your sprites etc in engine when creating your objects if you want. You can do pretty much anything you want as long as its 2D. The only thing UE and Unity have over it is the ability to work up to 3D. A big thing for me when working with an engine is the ability to understand it and its organization. Gamemaker along with Unity are both very similar in organization and its a lot easier to understand how things work. Unreal always feels far more complicated for even the simplest task. As for GM visual editor, its far more complex than he is saying here. Maybe he is confusing GameMaker with GameSalad or a very old version of GM... idk. GMS2 change GM a lot and it has a lot of experienced 2D studios using it and very successfully.  

Another Engine not mentioned here that is big behind the scenes with corporations etc and great for mobile games is GDevelope. It is starting to gain a lot of traction and looks to be a great starting point for people that aren't great with programming.

I mean if we're also putting ttrpgs into the category of board games then they're easily S tier. The amount of unique concepts you can explore with social play is infinite, and the indie ttrpg scene is one of the coolest corners of the game dev scene.

A point about Cryengine: If I remember correctly Crye is working on a new engine for hosting their games on. Will be interesting to see how different it will be and where it would end up ranking on an updated list.

Marnix: "... because of course we're a Unity shop here, our game Forge Insdustry is made with unity and you have been working with unity before so you must be loving this ..."
Thomas: "Laughs in pain"
But jokes aside, this is a very good elucidation about the engines available in game developing. Neat!

And to answer the question on 33:34, don't ask me why but the only engine I could think of is Thomas the little engine, but as there're no trains in this game (yet?!) ...

the original version of Vampire Survivors was made with Phaser :)

The information on GameMaker is honestly pretty misinformed. At the time this video was made:
-GameMaker was already free for educational purposes.
-"If you get started you outgrow it in a month, it's very niche". What are you basing this on? It's one of the most general purpose 2d engines out there, it can do pretty much anything in 2d. And "You can make anything with it, it's just not gonna be great". This is just bullshit, GameMaker is limited to your skills as a developer. Not unlike any other engine.
- "You can force it for 3D stuff with their pre-made assets and things like that." What on earth do assets have to do with an engine. People literally made custom doom/quake map loaders in GameMaker. You just need to do 3d yourself since it's a 2d engine.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that you guys are making comparisons, but this entire section is pretty misinformed. It is just really disappointing that almost all comparison videos on game engines are really shallow, generally misinformed and won't help people make an informed decision at all.

Apart from that, GameMaker's license structure has been updated at 21/11/2023, GameMaker is now:
-Free for non-commercial use.
-One-time fee for commercial use.
-Subscription model only for enterprise + console exports.

If you make a video about ranking game engines you should at least do more research and not form an opinion from hearsay.
Because it really feels like, that you didn't put much effort into the segment regarding GameMaker.

"It sounds like a learning tool more than an actual production ready game engine"
-> Many popular/successful games where made in it:
Untertale, Hyperlight Drifter, HoloCure, Hotline Miami, Nuclear Throne, Pizza Tower, Katana Zero, VA-11 Hall-A, Downfall, Rivals of Aether, Nidhogg, Loop Hero, ...

"With GameMaker you have to pay 10 bucks a month even if you have 0 sales"
-> You can use the Engine for free and only have to pay for the subscription when you want to export / create the build of the game. Everything after that is independent of your subscription.
You are free to sell your exported game even without an active subscription. No Royalties.

If you really want to, you can finish your game, pay for 1 month, export, and then cancel the subscription.
Problem is, if you plan to update your game to fix bugs or add content you need the sub again to create the new export.

Edit: typos

GD Script is not based on Go, but Python I believe