Back to Unity

I have worked on several different types of projects all the way from social and environmental organizations to a tech startup and I will tell you that one of the hardest parts of the process is starting. It takes an immeasurable amount of mental will to start something and bring it out to the world and on top of that one of the biggest challenges in any type of project is deciding the tools that you will be using to complete the project. Throughout last year even though I was working on other stuff I had always been pondering on which game engine I would be using when I really decided to start making my own video game. I ultimately decided on Unity (the first engine I used) and I am going to tell you why.

I have been poking around with game development for more than 10 years now. I have been trying all sorts of engines in any way or the other. I have tried using Godot, Unreal Engine, Gamemaker Studio and other weird block coding stuff but ultimately I keep coming back to Unity. I have wondered why I keep coming back to it and there is one simple reason. The community behind it is the biggest of all engines and it does not feel directed towards experts like the Unreal Engine one. As a non-expert coder I have found that even though Unity does not use what some people would say is an easy programming language, (it uses C# by the way) you can find all sorts of courses, tutorials, books and all sorts of content in English and in Spanish which make you feel very comfortable about it. It really feels that you are not alone with the engine.

Some people say there are drawbacks about using Unity for 2D games but I think there is not an issue that I would point to as a dealbreaker and plenty of 2D games have been developed using Unity. I am not an expert on the video game industry but I have seen how things have unfolded in the last years in the game engine industry and Unity seems to be the one directed towards democratization of game development for non-expert coders both in 2D and 3D. This all may seem like a biased opinion but if even myself, a non-expert coder feels comfortable with Unity even though it uses a programming language that most people would not call intuitive compared to other alternatives, it must be because it has been designed to be a very approachable and friendly tool for people with any type of expertise.

I will be sharing my road of learning more about the engine throughout the development of Spaceman Memories and I do hope I can share valuable insights for other people developing their own video game in Unity.