this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Cool, but it's also ruining games by "pioneering" shit technologies, such as temporal AA, making every game look like a blurry mess.
It's also a bad thing to have everyone using one engine, especially UE given how Epic likes to exert it's control over developers through it.
We should stop endorsing it, instead we should highlight and praise devs using alternate engines.
Engines like Unity and Unreal have been great, offered indie devs an easy way to create some fantastic games, but we should push smaller devs to try engines like Godot now for that as Unity and UE got too big for their boots.
Indie games on shoestring budgets are also the games that can least afford to pay employees to learn the "better" tool set on the job. Hiring devs that are experienced in Unreal or Unity means your onboarding is just about teaching them your studio's stuff, and the demands of your game. Budget is a zero sum game - if something like Expedition 33 (UE5) did it "right" instead of doing it "easy", they might not have been able to afford or produce the phenomenal mocap/VA/soundtrack/environments in the game.
Godot continues to mature, and some relatively big names in the indie space are publicly dumping Unity for it (like Mega Crit with Slay the Spire 2). But "pushing" smaller devs to ignore the onboarding problem isn't the way. It's the smaller devs that benefit most from engines with "good enough" defaults - bigger studios can afford to pay someone to "do the lighting".
Picking an engine (including the option of rolling your own shit) has to be a decision made very early in the game development cycle, like "before you hire anybody" early, and it's a really hard one to change your mind on later. For a lot of studios, the right decision isn't the "best, most capable, free-est" one. Hell, for Balatro the dev chose LOVE, which is usually used for VNs, because he didn't need all the other features he'd get out of something like Unity or Godot.
I have less issue with smaller devs doing it, for reasons you mentioned. Sometimes their creative idea is best getting out there on any engine than it not getting out at all. We just need to stop normalising the use of Unreal Engine, before it is too late. Balatro is a good example we should be highlighting instead of something like Expedition 33 (which I am not saying shouldn't have released at all, we just shouldnt be praising it for it's use of UE, but rather for it's other features/standouts, like as you mentioned).
I have yet to see a well made Unreal Engine 5 game, but every studio is seemingly jumping to it. It's become like a buzzword almost (you never used to hear about the engine much, but now it's all "yeah our game is on Unreal Engine 5!!!"). But for some, me included, it's like putting a "rotten" sticker on a box of food. I just want to see more devs try other options, so we don't stagnate and allow Epic full control over the industry essentially. We used to get lots of custom built engines, but we have been slowly consolidating over the last decade, which I know at the root of it, is down to good ol' capitalism. It just sucks for games and by extension, the consumers, us.
Do you not consider Expedition 33 a well-made game?
The comment I replied to says "we should push smaller devs to try engines like Godot now for that as Unity and UE got too big for their boots."
It still suffers from temporal AA (or "AI" upscaling), which has lots of blur and ghosting.
Yes... smaller devs should be encouraged to try alternate engines, but that's not always possible or feasible for some.