Most Underrated Game Engines

We all know about game engines like Unity, Unreal and Godot. In the 2D world we've probably heard of GameMaker and Construct. In this video we will look at a few of the below the radar or slightly underrated game engines available. We will look at engines in 3 different categories, beginner/learning engines, 2D game engines and 3D game engines. Hopefully I introduce you to couple new interesting game engines.
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[@gamefromscratch]

Links gamefromscratch.com/underrated-game-engines-round-up/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Support* : www.patreon.com/gamefromscratch *GameDev News* : gamefromscratch.com *GameDev Tutorials* : devga.me *Discord* : discord.com/invite/R7tUVbD *Twitter* : twitter.com/gamefromscratch -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@sirsquid577]

Hey there's a game engine that seems pretty cool but seems not many people know about called bitty engine which uses lua as its language, made by one guy too if i remember correctly. Might be worth looking into for a video if you dont already know about it！

[@tengkuizdihar]

You should also add fyrox engine to the list. Maybe it will catch your eye.

[@KenneyNL]

It's so good to also highlight the other options, good video!

[@mr._gear]

Hi! Kenney😊

[@iamthoys]

Are you Kenney from the tile packs? Those are awesome

[@tiacool7978]

A bit weird seeing you outside reddit.

[@brokenportals]

GDevelop is a great starting point, especially for those interested in 2D. For 3D though, it still has a long way to go.

[@Oxey405]

As an advocate I have to agree here but we're working on improving it !

[@lyssiafredriksson]

The thing is: you may find versatility, ease to use, a short learning curve: but at the end the problem is support: UE, Unity and Godot have tons of tutorials, online teachers , helpers a solid strong community that are able to help for free when you are stuck in a problem

[@Chareidos]

Yea... main reason why I am engaging with an engine is the fact that there are tutorials out there actually showing ways to solve a problem you may encounter. I already struggle with the lack of up-to-date Godot 4.x Tutorials that go through actually every aspect as it is now. Too many Tutorials are about 1 or 2 years old and do not help either. I am looking for new engines, but it all depends on someone showing me with confidence and patience (that I am lacking) where I find everything for a cohesive task or set of goals in mind, like making a 2d character with bones and sprite animation sheet for each part to have it move in 4 directions in a top down perspective. I had to find it out myself for Godot 4.x by combining what I learned so far for 2D bone animation and 4-8 Directional Animation Sprite Sheets. The amount of time, motivational energy, emotional work and nerves it did cost me, makes me extremely anxious about exploring a new engine.

[@MarcosCodas]

Thank you for the GDevelop love, Mike!🎉

[@matgame2957]

finally someone talking about defold engine, i tried it for a while i have to admit its a fantastic engine, especially for beginners

[@Warionator]

I agree its good, but there are a lot of things where they just assume you know what to do, ex: for any animation playback, you press spacebar to preview, yet there's no indication on that

[@F00d5tamp]

Dragonruby is also a great option for slightly experienced devs. It's allot easier than a full on framework but the hot reloading is fantastic. Ruby is a joy to use.

[@micmacha]

GDevelop is getting some sick 3D tools, too. I hope they keep that up.

[@NuViewDesign]

Great callouts! Thanks for your informative insights! 👍👍

[@raybelcher5200]

Thanks for making this video. I became a MicroStudio fan after you did a video for the native app option vs browser only version last year. Thinking about playing with the Wicket game engine based on the coverage. Thanks for what you do!

[@scardario]

Awesome list! Thank you! Love to hear about this kind of things

[@andrzejkulakowski]

Very useful coverage! Thanks Mike ☺

[@natecoley160]

I you'll mention Unigine someday, which also has community (free) version and well known for benchmarks such as superposition, vallery and heaven

[@Archaoen0]

i think CryEngine is pretty niche as well despite coming from a big developper

[@TeckGeck]

GDevelop is such a great 2D engine and was my start to game development and it's super easy to pick up the visual language

[@jaggin7561]

Came after the Unity Controversy but I will be sharing around this video. Its always great to know your options.

[@mr.cobalt6695]

I've been using Flax for my game, it's honestly really cool and one of my favorite things is that it is fast. I've tried both Unreal and Unity and Flax is just by far the fastest of the three, and provides some similar features. It has some rough edges but most of the bugs I've encountered can be fixed by an engine restart- which takes ~5 seconds from my testing. Also, the graphics seem way easier to configure to your liking than something like Unity with so many pipelines to have to fiddle with and learn... Unreal does still take the cake for graphics quality, but Flax is pretty fast in rendering performance as well, so that's useful. The main developer is also a graphics programmer so Flax has lots of potential to realize even cooler graphics.

[@KomodoBitGames]

How do you find resources like advanced material tutorials and assets for your project

[@mr.cobalt6695]

@@KomodoBitGames the material system is similar to unity's shader graphs and unreal's materials, so I can just look up tutorials when I need them. As for assets, ive been using 3D modelling websites like CGTrader, TurboSquid, and just modelling stuff myself in blender.

[@mr.cobalt6695]

@@jeffmccloud905 I hope I can make some money with my project, but im also making for a learning experience and so I can help improve Flax. If my game ends up getting popular I will spend more time on it for sure, though.

[@Elwaves2925]

It's a good, solid list that offers something for everyone. You're thinking seems to align with mine. I was curious if GDevelop would make the list as it's not really underrated but it's not one of the big boys either.

[@gamefromscratch]

Yeah, I was really on the fence if GDevelop is fair to call underrated at this point. I have a feeling in a year it wouldnt be.

[@brodriguez11000]

@@gamefromscratch Well Fanatical has their "Easy No-Code Game Design" bundle and I think they did the same on Humble Bundle awhile back so they're certainly getting the attention.

[@vcdgamer]

@@gamefromscratch I'd still call it underrated at this point. Especially since many, many people still don't have a clue that the engine even exists.😅

[@suryakamalnd9888]

Amazing video bro!! Thanks

[@JonathanPriceArt]

Thanks for this, Defold sounds like it could be my cup of tea.

[@FoozleCC]

Love that C3 is actually included in the first list lol - GDevelop is a great tool as well

[@planetaryashes]

i think there's one thing you forgot to mention and that's pico 8 for game dev that want's to learn lua but also make very small 2d game projects in a week with the limited 8x8 canvas for characters and tile sets and fun possibilities of making small games that could be stepping stones to a big project. awesome video of showing different game engines that have not been reconised by the game dev community, i think newcomers or veterans will be looking forward of trying different engines out of curiosity or for a change of pace.

[@lulasz_]

I was thinking about Pico8 also, but he said "Underrated Engines" and Pico-8 has actually big community, so it's not so underrated ;D

[@brodriguez11000]

@@lulasz_ Well underrated in the larger world. Within it's community RPG Maker is well known. Within said community Pixel Game Maker would be underrated.

[@planetaryashes]

@@lulasz_ then what about the impact engine that cross cade was made from

[@brodriguez11000]

GameCreator (on Steam).

[@beetledjuice3062]

TIC-80 is a good one too

[@foodlfg]

very informative video 👍

[@influenciaindebida]

Thanks! I'll look them up 🎉

[@BastetFurry]

3:40, Micro:Studio is pretty easy to set up on some *Pi if one wants a more local or private installation. My main gripe with it is that all text is always printed centered. Not great if you want a good UI for your game.

[@ghostdatamedia]

Gonna shout out Clickteam Fusion 2.5 it's been around and innovated upon since the 90s!

[@fuzzyvisions]

As soon as I saw this, I just knew that you was going miss out ( as most do ! ) the 'App Game Kit' ( AGK by the Game creators. They have been around since 1999 and are well astablished company and have a solid language for writing with 3D ( and 2D ) commands with shaders and lighting etc.

[@spicetea4060]

Defold mentioned 🥳

[@vcdgamer]

You have no idea, the number of times where every time I mention GDevelop as a game engine I use I always get the same response: "Huh? Never heard of it?" or "Your game's pretty impressive, but why not move to Unity because using gdevelop can be really limiting." Like seriously, one of the main reasons why I'm still using gdevelop for my current game is because of how easy and lightweight it is. And also because of this goal I have in mind: The same way games like Undertale and katana zero made game maker studio popular, hopefully games like mine sheds more light on gdevelop. Thanks Gamefromscratch for the extra mention!

[@vcdgamer]

@@PauloHenrique-vh1if Of course. Thanks for the reminder.🙂

[@hakura88]

great video, thanks

[@ToJoAudio]

torque3d would be another wildly underrated game engine, certainly the best network code out of the rest of these game engines and has an active development schedule and roadmap, since your last video on Torque3D 5 years ago it has added PBR, IBL, screen space global illumination and a bunch of other more modern techniques

[@GhettoWxzrd]

you've probably mentioned it somewhere (i hope), but Armory3D is an interesting and underrated Engine itself, even though really it is just a modded version of Blender 3D. Which is why i find it so underrated, it's two workspaces in one! All the cool stuff you can do with Shader graph, Animation, and the physics in Blender also makes it pretty advanced for achieving any game style you want too. Biggest issue with it right now is, Bugs and crashes. There isn't much for documentation as well which makes it kind of scary for beginners or someone who may run into bugs or issues and can't resort to reading the documentation to find out why, and won't have much luck looking for tutorials as well.

[@ciekawygier9545]

Thx for video!

[@TodorImreorov]

I would recommend kaboomjs, which is definitelly a very nice one in terms of api.. Gdevelop definitelly deserves a mention more than construct3 does imo

[@flannelbeard4621]

How so??? I use construct, serious question.

[@SylvanFeanturi]

Huge plus for microStudio!

[@paulsaulpaul]

Defold is best engine. Lua is the best language that his very fast and versatile. It has the fewest keywords of any other mainstream language, so you can't overengineer things. Functions are first class types, so you can do very clever things if you need/want to. Data manipulation is so much easier than other languages. If you have ever thought that the other engines are bloated and full of stuff you don't use, then use Defold. You'll find it very barebones. You will want to use britzl's libraries for things like cameras, input, etc. Don't use it for 3D. edit: and you won't find an engine that makes building for other platforms so easy. It's also absurdly fast when iterating. Build times during development are less than a second. No "reloading domain". You build for HTML, it just works. You build for any platform, it just works. No silliness like you have to deal with Unity.

[@juneru2]

I love Lua, I never had more fun with game-dev than with PICO-8 and Love2D. Lines of code are so compact and easier to read than C# and Unity for example.

[@user-ct1sj2ep6y]

I want to use Defold, but I can't find a virtual joystick for mobile phone, What should I do ?

[@cariyaputta]

Defold is great, batteries included.

[@Cronofear]

Flax engine is also Unreal like tbh. The project structure is identical for example, it even does some nice things like treating plugins as its own projects.

[@shawn5235]

Flax engine is nice but I had to delete it because if I put my game out there the CEO of Flax will get 4% of $1,000 yearly off my game if I sell my game for more money half of that goes to Flax.

[@Cronofear]

@@shawn5235 Are you sure? From what I've read in their website the license is similar to Unreal. You only pay 4% of the excess revenue if you make more than $250k per quarter.

[@jayrulez]

@@shawn5235 Where did you get this info?

[@adrianmarianpopoviciu215]

@@shawn5235 That is not true. You pay 4% royalty after your game earns $250k per calendar quarter. That means that if you make 251k, you pay 4% out of 1k which is $4. The count resets again next quarter.

[@flashjaysan1]

From Flax Licensing page : "Ship your game and pay a 4% royalty after your game earns $250,000 per calendar quarter"@@shawn5235

[@slawasaporogez6581]

Before Unreal engine indie developers preferred CryEngine from CryTech. Kingdom Come Deliverance, Prey (2017) used it.

[@SomeRandomPiggo]

Personally, I'm a fan of the Quake engines. They're easy to mod, open source, and they run really fast thanks to some genius optimizations. It's only a good choice if you want to make a first person 3D game though

[@dandylion7028]

Not sure if it’s under rated or not but it’s definitely obscure and it’s an engine I bought a while ago called lead works engine or ultra engine. I know it uses lua and C++ and has been getting updates, but not sure whether it’s a quality engine or not since I rarely see anyone cover it but it’s been on steam for a long time and it’s just fascinating to me because it reminds me of like early 2000 oblivion art style and what not with what’s been showcased. It’s basically licensed based but you then don’t have to pay any royalties after buying the license which is nice. But I still don’t know if the engine is good for game development because my coding skills are none existent I just got it to play around with and see if I could practice lua with it at some point.

[@ylluminate]

Esenthel is pretty impressive. Ever spent any time with it?

[@Ferer414]

I never heard of this game engine until now, so I checked it out and I'm extremely surprised it's not in the high ranks

[@lewisse_8966]

I wanna chime in with Dragonruby here for a game engine that's purely code-driven just like Raylib. It was covered here some time ago and it's just gotten better and better!

[@DaGreenDestroyer]

I absolutely love defold, its really amazing and I wish more people could see it, its like the godot for lua. Another i think is underrated is CryEngine. I dont see alot of people talking about lately, if you want 3d it works

[@EximiusDux]

Game maker has been around for a lot more than 15 years. It has been around for more than 20 years. It was one of the very few drag and drop engines that existed in a time when those ways of working were new.

[@amirhm6459]

this video is gold

[@Community-Compute]

Only 4 cylinders for Unreal? I figured it would be more like an old v8 since it uses C++. Great video!

[@swapd0]

Harfang3D (not shown) looks interesting.

[@microdavid7098]

defold has one of the best user interfaces in any game engine. I really enjoyed it but I wanted to jump ship to c# and unity for tutorials and future jobs and stuff. Microstudio is great, but there is a severe lack of tutorials that really held me back. It is possibly one of the most polished engines in the list design-wise though

[@lostvisitor]

any opinion on Torque ??

[@Shinesart]

Tried Unreal, unity and so on but now Gdevelop is the one I stuck for 2D and game jam. It is a lot easier to understand with its spread sheet style coding. UE is a little bit overwhelming, and Unity needs to know programming (Don't really understand bolt even though it is visual scripting unlike UE).

[@Shinesart]

@@PauloHenrique-vh1if I do know how the coding structure and basic works. The thing is, I always have typo and don't really know what formula or what Syntex to type to get it work plus errors that I don't know how to solve unless I had to search in Google. Following a tutorial is easy but when it comes to making my own thing, I got stuck. In node and spread sheet style coding like gdevelop & UE, I don't have to worry about typos. I can focus on making game instead of trying to fix my code. I can choose from the list and if needed, I can use behaviour extension from asset store and change the parameters to fit my needs.

[@OzoneGrif]

Any engine with Java coding? What do you think of jMonkey ?

[@shambach]

The most underrated thing in the game industry is this channel.. really the best thing happen to game development ever!

[@marcboss]

Nice, Gdevlop is great

[@fiordnord]

Great review! Any thoughts on cocos creator?

[@saeedbinthani9868]

RPG in a box I think it’s underrated

[@saul8510]

yea though, it more a game maker app made in godot.

[@AleksandarPopovic]

And yes you have very nice game lyberis for different games, that is low level programming games, people when say low level thin about c++and game engines, no, making a game just from lybery, just try then you know how all works, and yes how always best channel for game developers journalism and other topics, keep going, its need, special in this “strange time”...keep going

[@chris4321das]

MORE PLEASE!!!!

[@skaruts]

You can also use physics and graphics libraries with MicroStudio. You can actually make 3D games with it. As for MicroScript, tbh I don't think it's that much like Lua. It borrows a bit of the syntax, but other than that it seems much closer to JS. Unfortunately, actual Lua in MicroScript is quite slow. Not by fault of the engine, but because the library that ports Lua to JS makes it slow. Even slower than the Python equivalent that MicroStudio uses. It's still usable, I guess, for less demanding games, but it's a bit of a bummer for a Lua lover like me. I end up coding in MicroScript, which is, apart from JS, the fastest choice... but it has quite a few unnecessary tripwires in its design that can get you bugs and headaches. Other than that -- and one or two things I disagree in its design -- I'm quite enjoying that engine. Many things only require a few clicks, like creating a project, sharing it with people, adding libraries to a project, etc. The sprite and map editors are still a underdeveloped, but that's only a matter of time. In many respects it's actually a brilliant engine.

[@AndrewBrownK]

Have you ever tried/seen/heard of the C4 game engine?

[@JanBostl]

CryENGINE is one of the most underrated engine out there

[@LS-jv4uh]

Also: Pico 8, Kaboom, and ctjs

[@Cerbyo]

pico8 best for people who have made games in other engines and want a nice space to test ideas. aka the Celeste pipeline. most people confuse it as a starter program, but it's actually a middleman. unless ur doing an actual 4 year classroom diploma, then it can be used as a good starter.

[@Thund3rboltGaming]

What about Cryengine? :D must be really underated aswell ofc i think main reason nobody uses it is because the 5% royalty once u make 5k

[@RenderingUser]

Isn't that basically just O3DE?

[@izumichan31]

​​@@RenderingUser No O3DE is what was Lumberyard which was built from a much older version of Cryengine and very different from the official Cryengine's current version. O3DE iirc doesn't even have Cryengine code anymore since that can't be open sourced.

[@MrERJ1992]

@@RenderingUser Thing is, last I checked, O3DE is based on the Lumberyard engine, whereas that engine is actually a modified version of Cryengine.

[@RenderingUser]

@@MrERJ1992 I see

[@null643]

Wow that's extremely dumb charging 5℅ at only 5k made. There's no incentive to pick cryengine.

[@markd5622]

Unity is definitely the most underrated engine. So many people cry about it. It's actually the best and most productive creative platform.

[@Paruthi.618]

Defold is a good choice 2D game projects

[@Niccion]

Mike, can you maybe cover 3D engines which are fastest for prototyping games. I find Unity3d’s component systeem way too slow and bloated for fast prototyping. I was disappointed at Godot for fast prototyping. And I’m talking fast, fast, fast, and easy. Fast and easy prototyping without bloat. Maybe a framework without editor might be faster, something like solar2d but then for 3d. I’m now trying Gdevelop, it has some nice things you can at fast, like controls, but I’m not sure if the event system is faster than coding, It might be slower. I think gamemaker was my fastest experience, but that was for 2D. I don’t know how easy and fast you can get a 3D environment running in gamemaker. Anyone else knows the best engine for fast prototyping?

[@NoiecityHacking]

- Irrlicht + irredit

[@mr._gear]

Gdevelop is a revolutionary game engine.❤

[@homelessrobot]

> When you start the video talking about things that won't be in the video that are now necessarily in the video because you are talking about them IN the video.

[@Simon-ik1kb]

I guess you can also add Unigine engine to this list.

[@hellogic1964]

Can you make video about easy to use picoCAD alternatives (free and opensource softwares)

[@xEndless11]

Im using the Ursina Python Game Engine, with them im able to make a 3D Game like Crash Bandicoot and more ^^

[@user-fb4vl9mh5j]

I hope Renderware will become an popular engine for developer, especially for indie developer because, i think Renderware has a opportunity to become like a Unity and Unreal in the future.

[@devongrant7577]

Can you go in depth about usd files

[@pnvgordinho]

I like what MANU is doing.

[@pointblankeloquence9578]

Armory 3D and UPBGE!

[@LinuxPlayer9]

MakeCode is like Scratch but it feels like more people know about Scratch

[@damvcoool]

Unigine is also an underrated Engine.

[@judasthepious1499]

so many game engine, so little time..

[@whtiequillBj]

I found another game engine that isn't on this list, Castle Game Engine. It uses Pascel.

[@MikeCore]

What do you think about BuildBox?

[@gamefromscratch]

Haven't looked at BuildBox much since they made some very very very stupid business decisions. I covered them on the channel.

[@MikeCore]

@@gamefromscratch Just checked your other videos because of this, some pretty outrageous stuff. I used them quite a few years ago, it is a great tool, and I'm sure it's even more amazing now, they didn't even have the 3D when I last used it. But man it's quite disappointing that it has to be under such poor management.

[@andreasmortensen6809]

It’s so sad when an otherwise interesting software is only online as a webapplet

[@davidmcbride5357]

Love hidden gems

[@Blazs120gl]

Haha while I was watching the video I thought about recommending Janos's (a fellow Hungarian :) ) Wicked Engine XDDDD and lo and behold, it's in your compilation! XDDD Boy that engine has come a long way since I first saw it in 2017ish ! I think I'm gonna have to re-visit it to see if features I missed back then, maybe are now available.

[@splashshadow]

DEFOLD !!!

[@kazuar87]

show some love to Hazel also!

[@RenderingUser]

How bout cover some game libraries next? Like pygame or raylib or bevy for another video

[@FlorianRival]

GDevelop ❤

[@flannelbeard4621]

Here to rep CONSTRUCT 3 ❤️❤️❤️

[@GouShin1]

I just want to point out that Game Maker the engine is free to use, what your paying for is just the ability to export to certain platforms, your not hindered with the engine itself. Also $50/yr is cheap af if all you care about is desktop, now $800/yr for consoles is great as well or you can simply use the monthly pricing as a 1 time export but even if it works 100$ on desktop there could be issues on console.

[@HE360]

Love2D

[@MikeNugget]

1. GameMaker 2. Construct 3 3. Make & Code Arcade 4. Micro Studio 5. Defold 6. GDevelop 7. Wicked Engine 8. Flax Engine 9. Falco Engine You are welcome

[@Y2Kvids]

Cocos Creator

[@apollolux]

@@Y2KvidsDude was listing the ones that were in the video, Cocos was not among them this time.

[@TheSlimshader]

no Stride?

[@IzFanArt69]

Gdevelop good for artist like me.

[@IanHollis]

Stencyl never seems to get much love. Not even sure if it's supported any more.

[@tiacool7978]

I don't think it gets support anymore. It's still up as far as I know, but feels like it lost a lot of the momentum it originally had.

[@user-tc5zs2ls3w]

I wonder why people are not talking about PlayCanvas game engine.

[@Violethood]

Soon or later O3de will be in top 10

[@Ferer414]

If Amazon plays the right moves it might even compete with unreal

[@Violethood]

@@Ferer414 Yeah True

[@igorgiuseppe1862]

the spreadsheet aproach is the best for making games in a phone (gdevelop, construct)

[@firstname4337]

I have these 3 that I like 001 Game Creator AppGameKit Studio GDevelop 5

[@Ferer414]

Can I get your thoughts on 001 Game creator

[@epsilon017]

@@Ferer414 Coming from someone who's been using it for over 15 years now... It's not *the most powerful* tool on the market, no. And unfortunately porting to Mac or console is also off the table, BUT... I've found it to be fairly easy to learn, and easier to concoct a solo-project the moment an idea pops into my head; I've used 001 in several different gamejams while putting out projects that had me ranked in the top 10%. Also while I can't speak for it's potential for 3D (Because I'm completely inept at modeling), I've enjoyed making pixel-art for this engine. Overall, it's still pretty robust and versatile. I'd recommend at least giving the demo a chance, if you've got some interest.

[@Ferer414]

@@epsilon017 Thanks for the info man, I'll definitely give the demo a shot

[@hoangtongvu9952]

love2d is a great game engine too :v but it has no editor

[@kingconstantinusthesadisti133]

Theres also chinese game engine called cocos. Please review them, they already exist since 2010.

[@Luluskuy]

Rpg maker?