Unity vs Unreal: Which Engine Should You Choose As A Beginner

im gonna start unreal just because i had this random motivation at 3 AM

Game dev in my head: I'm gonna make a hyper realistic level with amazing movement, combat and an adaptive AI. Game dev in reality: Help I've imported a mesh and crashed my computer

"Tackling the harder part first makes everything after it much easier" next level motivation 🔥🔥

Coming from Unity to Unreal I can certainly see the use of both of them. Unity is a simpler, more logical engine, It certainly lends itself towards mobile production, as Unity Devs push optimisation for CPU only processing. If you're a solo dev wanting to make small mobile/pc/console games, Unity will do it. As others have mentioned physics in Unity is hit and miss and not really reliable without expensive plugins like Rayfire. Which leads to my next gripe with Unity which is Asset Store deprecation. Asset Devs clearly undervalue their releases, sell 10,000 copies then realise another year of upkeep and upgrading, just isn't worth the money. If you're a visual scripter, playmaker will have you banging out games really quickly, and is only limited by available actions, but Jean Fabre will add any missing or useful actions free of charge. Bolt is closer to Unreals Blueprints, but again, is more streamlined and logical. Lastly Multiplayer on Unity is a mess, its the only aspect which is over complicated versus Unreal. Unreal on the other hand is a must for Large scale open world games, even if your a solo dev. Out of the box, I was completely lost when I created a new project, in what Unreal calls an 'Empty' project, only to press play and suddenly a whole bunch of game objects and processes are added to my scene......wait, i haven't added any code yet.....what is spawning all this stuff? I had to follow a fairly lengthy tute just to understand they are all necessary engine components, that magically appear. Though once you understand what is going on, it just means you can hand off a lot of complications to the engine. Nanite has changed the game for open worlds. I was confused to see that Epic had removed tesselation from their shaders, until i realised what nanite was. Theres no need to fake texture depth when you can just make a high poly terrain/static mesh, and wrap a flat texture around it. Seeing worlds come together with 4k Megascans terrains with excellent performance is simply breathtaking. Haven't really played with Lumen yet, though after watching a few tutorials its something i will definitely be incorporating into my finished products. Unreal certainly leverages the power of GPU's and adding raytracing to your game is a check box away. You do see a small amount of deprecation, or just slow releases of new updates on the unreal marketplace, but its far less rampant than the Unity Asset store. When it comes to forums in Unreal, people openly talk about blueprints as almost the dominant programming language in Unreal, where as Unity forums, visual scripting is a dirty word and if you're not a code monkey, GTFO. Lastly, if you're working in a large team, Unreal offers far more solutions for a team to work simultaneously, far better than Unity's cloud based system. Keep in mind, all the things i've mentioned wouldn't be of any use to someone who could get away with Unity. I haven't even touched on workflows like animation i.e Unitys terrible avatar system versus Unreals retargeter, the difference between a prefab and an actor, how global variables are handled, and so many others, needless to say they are chalk and cheese. Only other thing I can say is, pick one and stick with it. Moving from Unity (which i chose a decade ago, due to their more reasonable pricing, since which, Unreal have come to the party on pricing), to Unreal, is massive. Its like speaking english your whole life and suddenly deciding to only speak in chinese. EVERYTHING workflow wise is different, I literally took nothing i learned in Unity through to Unreal. Don't just think of your current project, Think ahead, Will you need the power of unreal in the future? Or will your projects always be smaller/mobile projects? Anything Unity can do, Unreal can do, but not the other way around. Unreal is far harder to learn, but so much more powerful. Pick one, stick with it.

Having never used a game engine (though I’m an experienced programmer) I picked Unity initially simply because of the scripting language. I’d used both C++ and C# for application development, and much more C++ historically, but since about 2015 C# has become my main general purpose language of choice. Took about a year for me to feel I knew Unity well enough, and see a few things I didn’t like so much, so I tried Unreal. I realised that despite the initial similarity, I not only had to start almost from square one, I also had to unlearn a lot of habits. It’s just a hobby for me and I’m in my sixties with no big ambition to create realistic 3D worlds or find a job in game development, so Unity suits me though I’m also going to try Godot. Regardless, these game engine thingies blow my mind, and not least because they are free for someone like me.

I really appreciate you showing examples of games made in each engine it really helps us know which is better for our goals

I think this is a case of analyzing what your game needs and what you want from an engine and choosing the one that most effectively suits it. I like the comparison videos because it’s interesting to see how two popular engines stack up, but in reality it probably comes down to the game requirements and which engine has the best tools for the job

Thank you for going over it , I needed answers fast so I clicked here and you explained the most easiest way possible ❤

Great video! The advantages of each enginge have been nicely highlighted. I would also mention that there are differences in online multiplayer. Unreal has a built-in solution. I would also prefer Unreal for the quality of the asset store. Often the assets are no longer supported in Unity or are not supported by the current render pipelines. In addition, you have to limit yourself to third-party providers for things that are Unreal Built-In. That's not always an advantage. Often these assets are no longer supported by the creator. There are also many assets in Unity, which have great characters or environments, but mostly in limited quantities. So it's harder than not being an artist to find enough assets that go well together. If you want to gain experience in many genres, Unity is the better choice. There isn't a genre that doesn't have a plugin or asset for it. Unreal, on the other hand, has little choice. Especially in the area of ​​RTS, Turnbased, Arcade Racer etc. And the tutorials. Oh well. As a beginner, clearly Unity. There are tons of tutorials for the basics. But when it comes to more specific topics such as AI, it gets pretty thin. There are far fewer Unreal tutorials, but in my opinion they are more in the "Advanced" area. In terms of workflow, I personally find Unity nicer. A lot can be outsourced to a separate script. In this way the creation of a game can become more modular and I can easily integrate many of these scripts into later projects. That saves a lot of time.

I'd like to add that whatever the game engine you're picking, your game will be good thanks to your game design knowledge/experience and the amount of polish you'll add to your game. A strong mechanic with a great feeling is above the engine choice. Also, you should aim for learning new things, testing and mastering little concepts at a time before going for a full game. I like to think about a complete game as little bricks you put together, and the amount of time and tries you'll put into those bricks will make the difference on the overall experience

This was a really great well rounded video for beginners. Thank you!

Great Video I am in software development at the moment, but my goal is to become a game developer. Thank you for the detailed description of both unity and unreal engine.

Learning and mastering Unreal gives not only access to game development but to a large amount of possibilities, like archviz, VR event design, media industry... maybe u can do your stuff into video rendering or 3D Visualization with Unity, but the real thing is that Unreal Engine has become the standar in these fields. Sorry about my english, nice video thumbs up.

I loved the "if you think taking third party assets is cheating, get a life boomer" because that was the entirety of my first time trying to learn game design. I was too prideful to use any premade assets and always wanted mine to be made from scratch by me. then I realized how difficult and uselessly long it takes, all for you to do the same thing you could've done with premade stuff.

Awesome explanation. Probably the best comparison video I've seen. Love the nuggets about C++ vs C# in its core. Means alot!

Your spiking style just amazing. Easy to understand.

click on the magnet, and from there you can adjust how the tracks snap onto the grid. if you want it to be each 1/4 of a bar, click "line"

At this moment. People thinking of using Unity should maybe check the fee per install first before even using it. Unreal though, no worries just go ahead haver fun.

Thanks! This is probably the most adequate review of game engines.

I really needed this. Thanks