Which Engine Is Best? (Unity / Godot / Unreal / Game Maker)

you want to make games but you can't decide between Unity unreal GD or game maker me and my buddy Greg lobanov and by the way he made a ton of games including wandersong chakori beasty ball and coin Crypt he and I talk all about this and his thoughts on which engine he decided to use might surprise you look just because an engine is the worst engine doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for you in your indie game this will all make sense I promise and by the way regardless of the engine you choose it's possible to take a small demo and actually turn it into a full-time paycheck this is what I did with my demos and it's also what Greg did I teach all about this in a free webinar Below in the description it's my treat to you and you're going to learn a ton about how to build an actual profitable game Studio from your bedroom before you even finish your game that's the cool part click below to check it out all right let's jump into the conversation with Greg but what's different what's different about you than all the other Developers is you don't use

Unity um can you give me can we shift gears shift gears here and talk about why are we using Game maker and not Unity or gdau or unreal uh I learned how to use Game Maker when I was 12 uh and I I just don't I just don't like being bad at things so every time I try to learn I have actually I I used I made some games like not not commercial games but I've made games in unity um I know I know the gist of it I just really don't like it and I'm I'm used to the way game maker like I'm just I have a game maker shaped brain now because I just grew up with it um and again I'm also fortunate that the engine has sort of grown up with me because they theyve been they now that you know it's available on Console ports when I want to make mobile games they did mobile ports um and so it's just always kind of been like yeah it's just always been it's whatever I wanted to do it always kind of worked and I think it's actually been I think it's been useful to my

career in the long term because it has its limitations like it's not good at making 3D games and stuff but honestly making 3D games sucks no one should do it and like the fact that I I never I never like was you know because like I just I just always make 2D games only had 2D IDs because I used a 2d game engine and I think that is a big reason why we able finish the game started it helps defin helps right and keeps small budget and stuff so yeah well why why is it that 2D games and 3D games have a different bud in your from your perspective it's just so exponentially harder like like um there are so many angles like so as as like let's say as speaking as an art director um if you want to put something on the screen uh in a 2d game the the pipeline is so simple it's like if I I want something to look like this I draw it looking like that I put it on the screen that's what it looks like what it looks like y you know 3D is like okay well like just to make a 3D asset like that's timec consuming like that's almost like to do a really good drawing and make a a good 3D asset a 3D asset

takes longer then you have to skin it then you have to put in the game engine and then there's like questions about like lighting and shading and making sure that like just just on a basic technical level that everything's hooked up in the correct way and then you have camera work to deal with as well so like like you know just making something look a certain way is like so not trivial in 3D like for every single asset every single asset is to go through so many and then and then it doesn't look right right sence iteration it's like well why doesn't look right oh well from this angle like this thing looks too small or oh because the camera is this far away or this close so we have to make this higher resolution or whatever it is right so like it's just yeah and then that so that for every single asset for years and years and years forever correct that's why and that's just the art that's just the art that's not even talking about the collision and physics and optimization optimization is huge so like we when we were working on Twisted Tower uh I'm still working on it but like we as a team yeah it looked amazing it looked so good and then we we we sent

it off to the QA team mhm and they were like hey you know it's running at 20 FPS on Playstation just FYI it's 20 frames per second and so we're like crap okay well we got to we got to learn how to bake lights and so the team figured out how to bake lights and the game looks completely different in all the worst ways it looks flat and boring there's it's not Dynamic there's not those cool shadows being cast now obviously you could figure out how to do better light mapping but we're a small Indie team yeah and point being you know the whole optimization process not only is it incredibly timec consuming to figure out with 3D games but yeah if you don't do it perfectly your game doesn't like you said it's not like 2D where it just looks like how it looks yeah it changes based on the optimization principles you decide to use 100% 100% yeah and it's like it's very specialized technical knowledge to do a good job at any like light mapping is one thing and then yeah like the 3D like 3D calling and 3D

geometry reducing and and just like getting your shaders to run faster like like every little effect in every Shader suddenly yeah I mean like 2D like has like you it's like we optimize stuff in 2D and sometimes you compromise to look a little bit 2D but still I feel like I have so much more control over the you know from start to finish where it looks like yeah you know when I think about game maker versus let's say unreal sure um game maker is like it's like walking into a pantry and there's like you have your you canned chicken you have some bread some and some black beans and that's your choice and then with with unreal it's like uh Cheetos Doritos uh cupcakes truffles you got your canned chicken though you got it up there in the corner there collecting cobwebs M the what what what I'm really describing there is developers who jump into unreal and they're like look at all the this amazing stuff mhm we've got uh you know

real time uh Global illumination we've got unlimited you don't have to do an LOD it's just unlimited uh draw distance uhhuh and we've got all these Mega scans and they're all free and what happens is you get these massive bloated games that all look the same with unreal right yeah actually this is um this is something that I've um so I judge um art for the igf I do like theual art category yeah so like on the jury this is something we talk about a lot um and like this I don't remember who who said this to me but it was really interesting because they they talked about how when the engines get really big because yeah like you say like unreal games can have a look to them and even Unity games can have a look to them and that comes from like Mastery so if someone has a Mastery of the game engine then the game start to look like that person and then then you can't tell what they made it and when they have total control over it but with these really big game engines because they they are so like huge and honorous

and like and like like you know all every aspect of everything that's lit in an unreal game is not done by you and to make have master of that is like so such a technical skill so it's like especially when someone's working and they're making their first game for example it's going to end up looking like the engine because you don't know like it's like you're you don't know how to change half of the stuff in it because you don't even know what half of the stuff it's doing right um yeah and this is like like with with 2D again like this kind of I think this gives you a shorter path to that that kind of like that that m thing where your vision like your unique idea what the game should look like tends to map out you know like a lot of games that are made in game maker don't look like game maker yeah I think when when you like if you yeah look at popular game maker games yeah no one no one even knows our my games are made in game maker anymore people are always shocked by it ball has 3D stuff in it for the record like we put a 3D rendering yeah we we made 3D rendering and like 3D model loading and stuff for it so like no one knows that it's still on Game Maker but yeah like it doesn't look like game maker right and it doesn't look like Unity it sure doesn't look like unreal like it's it's a weird

janky ugly middle between all that stuff thing and it's fun like it looks different I I I I think it has an appealed to it like like undertale or like pizza Tower like these are games that are like you know and like they're not even like they're done really well it's not like they're done without craftsmanship but it's just like that's an art style that is really appealing to people in a totally different way that AI wouldn't produce right and until Pizza Tower existed and AI could like now iterate on the ex you know before it was there a couldn't do that right yeah so exciting what would the prompt be before Toby Fox right what would the prompt be to say make me a game that looks like that like undertale you know yeah yeah what is that even cuz like Toby Fox for all of his talent he made a really ugly looking game but it's beautiful but it's it's like it's like it's using awful colors on purpose you know and it creates that charm that you just it only can come from from a singular mind yeah yeah it's very it's

very personal like that's what that's what sings about it yeah so yeah I think that stuff will always be there and if anything I'm excited I'm excited for people to like get more of a taste for that if if if AI ends up diluting you know showing up everywhere yeah oh that's a really good way to put it man I think you're totally right it's like um suddenly it makes smaller more personal games more valuable because they're more scarce yeah yeah and that's that's exciting to me yeah it is I mean you've done a really good job in your career like with with your games cuz they they have a very very distinct Greg style I think you I think you've nailed it and you still and you do it with a team which is incredible sure yeah yeah yeah I was um this is something I've been talking to people lot about this because yeah BC ball came out and we were sort of looking at it and it was like it was funny to me because it um the response the audience response is so similar to the other games I've done like you know it's like like a similar size of audience with the same like level of enthusiasm which is which is awesome and

it was interesting to me because before the game came out I was thinking like oh this is going to be one that like it's it's a it's in a popular genra and like and like it's more Desy like the story is is a bit more compromised and we're doing something a bit more like systemy and stuff and so like people are gonna it's gonna hit people in a really different way and that wasn't the case but it's interesting because yeah the art style is so different between the games too like I thought that's how I was I kept bringing up I was like isn't it weird cuz like my games look so different they're all different genres and my friends I tell they like no they all look like your G yeah yeah so yeah we can't we can't get your stink off of your games I can't I can't to use that metaphor of smell like I I would always talk about my and we'll wrap up here but I would always talk with my team about I want my games to smell the same it's it's it's an aroma it's it's this sense or this subconscious sense of like oh that you could just spot that from a mile away and I was just like you I was super duper worried when we were Twisted Tower

but if you look at Twisted Tower in its final form it's almost in its final form if you look at that game versus like pin striper Never song it's like yeah that's that's Thomas's game even though it was a team based game um and I think you're right I think that it's hard to get AI to do that um it just it just takes human hands even if it's a team someone at the helm to create that that Greg or that Thomas style you know yeah y y well cool man thanks so much for hanging out this was a blast is there anything you wanted to to leave the audience with obviously we'll have the link in the description for beasty ball yeah and would you like your website or your Twitter or beasy ball which one would you want to put in there if I was going to put one thing in there I think people should check out beasty ball that's what we're working on right now but uh yeah okay anything anything you want to leave the audience with uh I hope that people make games I hope that people like like I I I think it's really

fun uh and it's uh yeah you know you should try it if you're thinking about it you should try it it's it's good stuff it's great it's great it's a it's the one art form that is every art form um you know what I mean it's it's I would say that film making was every art form but now it's no game development is giving control to the audience in a film and it's just a it is a Monumental task but that's what's so fun about it you know if you like to make stuff there is the most stuff to make in games and and you can do it all your which is not true in film but in games you get you get to sit down and and have your hand on every part right and that's fun for a certain type of person if you're if you're like me yep exactly well cool Greg thanks for taking the time dude this was really really fun yeah by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with just a demo I was just like you for years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck

but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching