Some game engines are real, others are... unreal
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Programming
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Sounds like you are having trouble with English. I don't really understand what you are asking and judging by the comments of the others here I am not alone with that.
Maybe run your question through Google Translate or an LLM and post the result here so that we have a chance to actually understand what you are talking about.
Is game engine dev real?
I don't think game engines are drawn from a well in the ground, so yeah it's real.
What if I want to make an RPG game with a text dialog that you can scroll down?
Then do it. Or don't, I'm not a cop.
according to my research, 50% of mobile games are made with Unity? Maybe some for the engine, some for pure coding? Maybe that’s their trick?
Maybe. 90% of mobile games are shovelware slop though. Unity makes that easy. There's no trick.
I think you have a point.
I'm not sure I know what you're asking. Many people use established engines and many of those engines are still under active development to add features, tune performance, etc. Some people also choose to write their own, either for learning/fun or for more specific usecases.
Sure you can build an engine if you want- the reason so much stuff is unity is because it handles the cross platform build/deploy for you and is already a well established engine/platform.
If you’re trying to make a game- use an engine. If you’re trying to make an engine, don’t get distracted with making a game. They’re very different things these days.
If you’re just doing this to learn and want to make a game from scratch, then do that- but the cross platform is a pain.
the cross platform is a pain.
It doesn't have to be with libraries like SDL. Years ago I got stuck fighting all-in-one game engines that didn't fit my design choices, precisely because I thought it would be worth it for platform independence. Then I found out about SDL, which was what I actually wanted.
If someone thinks that not using a pre-rolled engine with a full editing suite included is a waste of time, I can respect that. But there are options if you'd rather make your own but still don't want to have to learn the ins and outs of multiple hardware architectures and operating systems.
SDL? I think you are talking about C? I think that's so low level? Haven't you considered trying C++ instead?
SDL is written in C, but bindings are available for multiple languages, including C++ and C#. As it happens I was actually using it with C++. And there are other libraries you could use instead, like GLFW or Allegro.
I've never thought of C as being that much lower-level than C++, but I guess everything's relative.
I agree with you on that.
I feel like making your own engine is really only necessary for two reasons:
-
You want to save money by not licensing someone else's engine
-
You wanna flex by doing something new or differently
- You want to make a technically simple game, and want it actually to be able to run on a potato instead of just looking like it should, and you already have the skills or aren't afraid to take the time to learn.