1. Unity
Unity is the most popular game engine for creating mobile games as well as AAA games. It is used by hobbyists and AAA game studios. It packs many features together and is flexible enough to make almost any game you can imagine.
Unity has a ton of features like powerful shaders, physics-based materials, post-processing, and high-resolution lighting systems, as well as you can animate nearly anything with Unity. With support for every major console and operating system, games developed in Unity can be deployed to absolutely any platform.
Unity has huge learning resources and communities available, which can help you learn a lot. Unity asset store contains thousands of models, materials, scripts, textures, and everything you could want. You can even sell your own assets on the Unity store.
Unity is Free. But if you are earning more than $100,000 through sales, you'll have to upgrade to plus or pro.
2. Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine is a popular and widely-used game engine developed by Epic Games. It is used in many modern AAA games like Fortnite, Rocket League, PUBG MOBILE, etc.
, Unreal Engine has a built-in physics engine, allowing for soft-body physics, particle effects, and more simple things like gravity. It also has powerful material and animation tools for artists, allowing you to make complex scenes quickly. The texturing and materials tools in Unreal are second to none, in my opinion.
On top of all these features, there is a huge amount of documentation to help you learn the system.
A big benefit to Unreal Engine is that it’s completely free to use. Whether you’re a hobbyist developer or a AAA studio, there is no upfront fee to use Unreal.
3. Godot
Godot is recently getting very popular among indie game developers. Godot is a free and open-source game engine made for 2D and 3D game development.
The built-in tools of Godot truly make game development easier for developers of all skill levels. Godot takes care of a lot of the grunt work associated with game development, letting developers focus on the fun part- making cool games.
Godot has well-written documentation, and the community is growing really fast, so you can start learning it with no problem.
Finally, it is worth reiterating that Godot does not cost a single penny! There are no royalties or hidden fees in Godot at all. This makes Godot even sweeter.
4. Phaser
This engine lets you develop HTML5 games for desktop and mobile right from the browser. Because Phaser is easy to learn and commands a large community, it’s a good solution for people learning 2D game development.
Developers with a background in web development and Flash(Adobe animate) will appreciate Phaser the most. While it’s aimed at beginners and is easy to learn, many of Phaser’s features are locked behind a paywall.
The Phaser website has an extensive list of tutorials and coding examples covering everything you’ll need to learn game development quickly.
You will have to pay to unlock extra features, but the license is free. Games that you develop with Phaser are yours to release and sell.
5. Construct 3
Construct is the perfect engine for ultra beginners, making it one of the preferred ecosystems to use in the classroom with students trying to grasp the basics of game development.
Construct is basically focused on 2D games creation, but you can still create fake 3D or 2.5D games using some Z-elevation and other useful layout effects.
Construct requires no knowledge of programming or whats o ever. Construct uses its own visual scripting system, which makes it easy to create something quickly.
There are several options available for anyone wanting to use Construct, starting with its free version. The individual license costs $99 a year, is royalty-free, and lets users sell and monetize their games, unlike the free version. The features available in the free version are quite limited, though...
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