When developing games there are multiple factors that play into the decision of which game engine to use.
- What kind of game is being developed? (2d, 3d, performance heavy, art focus, etc.)
- How much support is there around those engines?
- What resources are available?
A game engine can support developers in the progress of making games by providing them with a graphical user interface, libraries for multiple programming languages and predefined tools for enabling a quick way of implementing logic of the game. Tasks like rendering a 3d model are made easy through the options of calculating physics, handling collision detections, playing animations and sounds and compiling code.
Unity:
Unity is considered one of the best game engines considering the balance of learnability and support of functionality. It is great for 2D and 3D games, as well as VR and mobile games while still being free for game developers earning less than $100.000. However, once a game is very performance draining, Unity can run into issues handling performance.
Unreal:
Unreal has similar strengths as Unity but excels in its graphical capabilities, which makes it a good choice for high quality graphical focused games. Many developers prefer Unity over Unreal as Unreal requires more knowledge to be able to use efficiently.
Godot:
A selling point of the Godot engine is that it is completely free and open-source with a large community for support.
Phaser:
Phaser focuses on the development of mobile and browser 2D games.
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