What is the best game engine: is Unity right for you?

gamesindustry.biz:

For developers just starting in the industry, the task of choosing the best game engine can be daunting. Here, we'll try to address many of the issues concerning one of the most popular game engines, Unity, so you can see if it's the right game engine for your project.

You can read our other in-depth guides on all the major game engines from this page.

Anyone who has been to a game expo in the past decade will be able to tell you that a huge percentage of indie developers showing off their projects have been using Unity.

While it's hard to back up this statement with cold hard facts, it is without a doubt the most common belief when it comes to Unity: the engine is known for being the go-to development environment for indie and mobile games.

Some data does partly support that image: in 2022, 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games were powered by Unity, as well as more than 60% of all AR and VR content, at least according to the company itself.

The engine maker even goes as far as to say that 50% of games across devices use its tech. Unity game players are located in 195 countries – which is literally every single country on the planet.

Unity Editor boasted around 1.3 million monthly active users as of March 2023, the company claims. Unity also says that 3,300 new projects were started on average every single day in 2022.

Apps using the engine, which supports over 17 platforms from the obvious iOS to PS5, to the less visible Microsoft HoloLens or Android TV, were downloaded over four billion times each month during 2022.

Runtime, Unity's real-time development platform, allows for content creation in 2D and 3D planes, as well as AR and VR content. The company says it is active on over four billion devices as of March