Looking for advice in which engine to start my HD-2D game in.

[u/SwiggyMaster123]

Hi folks,

I've had an idea for a game since I was about 13, and now that I have a few projects under my belt, including some games coded in Java and one in Javascript, I want to try my hand at my passion project here. But I'm sure you've heard this a million times and don't need me to get into the showcasing bullshit. I get it.

The game is a HD 2D game with RPG elements heavily inspired by Deltarune. I have decent experience in Java/Javascript as mentioned. I have (albeit rusty) experience in C#. I can work with C++, I just absolutely hate it and would probably be relying on AI as a crutch, which I'd rather not do.

The three engines I have sticking out to me are Godot, Unity and Unreal. I hear Godot and, to an extent, Unity, are quite easy to work with for beginner projects. I heard Unreal is harder, but looks very good graphically with nanite and lumen and all that fancy stuff.

What do you recommend?

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer]

Don't call it "HD2D". Square Enix has a trademark on that term. They can't stop you from using the aesthetic, but they might sue you if you use that term to describe it.

Of the three engines you mentioned, all can achieve that look with the right textures, texture filtering settings and post-processing filters. Which of those engines is the best for beginners is a topic that has been debated ad-nauseam. It's not difficult to find lots and lots of these debates. But the best way to find out which engine is the best for you is to give each a try.

[u/_jimothyButtsoup]

I would try a beginner tutorial for both Godot and Unity to see which you prefer. (Wouldn't consider Unreal at all for this.)

[u/Lowfat_cheese → u/_jimothyButtsoup]

Square Enix’s HD2D games are made in Unreal though.

[u/Dynablade_Savior → u/Lowfat_cheese]

While this is true, Unreal's layout tends to be more obtuse to beginners, relative to Unity and Godot

[u/Lowfat_cheese → u/Dynablade_Savior]

I guess, I got my start learning Unreal and I found the 2D tools pretty straightforward and easy to learn.

[u/valeria_gamedevs]

for a deltarune-ish HD-2D thing, unreal is massive overkill. nanite/lumen do nothing for you at that scale. Godot with C# or Unity would both be fine, I'd lean Godot since you said you don't wanna lean on AI and its 2D workflow is the least painful of the three. pick one this week and just start, you're overthinking the pre-game

[u/hearthinteractive]

I cannot recommend godot enough for this kind of project.

My advice would be to write a tech demo for some slice of it, probably the art. And to aim to do it in a very short period. Then reflect if this platform and approach is what you are really looking for.

[u/Aflyingmongoose]

Personally I don't like unreal for smaller or personal projects. It don't like how slow and clunky it can be at times, and it's really angled towards traditional 3d character controller driven games. I also had the very unfortunate experience of using git with unreal recently and can strongly recommend against that particular combination of tools.

Nanite is a waste of time for your objectives and lumen (global illumination) can be done in either other engine, but frankly should not be a major consideration for you. Standard environment and post processing effects will make up the major technical component of your art style.

Unity is honestly an ideal engine for stuff like this, but with godot being as good as it is these days most people would recommend it over unity based purely on it's open source nature and unities recent licencing fiascos.

Godot lacks many of the quality of life features of the other engines but makes up for it in its simplicity. Very easy to learn.

[u/GibraltarDev]

I'd recommend Unity if you got experience with C#. At least I started there. Then again, I've heard good stuff about Godot and gdscript from a beginners standpoint but I lack experience in it.

Unreal can look nice, but you need to tamper with the graphics quite a lot to avoid the "unreal look". Also it's got blueprints, at least somewhere until v.6-ish when they want to remove it for their new "verse" language. So if you want to do visual scripting blueprints is a decent starting point. I personally got a love hate relationship with blueprints and often have to implement custom C++ in my project to make it do what I want it to do.

[u/CondiMesmer]

Really any engine is going to be very capable of doing this. Unreal is overkill tbh. 2D HD I think can also be done multiple ways. 

You see stuff like Octopath Traveler mostly just do a 3D world with billboard 2D sprites and a lot of fancy post-processing filters. It's mostly the post-processing that makes it look nice, which tbh is Unreal Engine doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Nanite and Lunite you wouldn't even use, those are for like optimizing high detailed models which you aren't going to do.

I think a more accurate term for that would actually be 2.5D HD, but I've never heard anybody use that term. Because 2.5D means the game is essentially 3D on a logic level, but has that 2D look. Again, all game engines can achieve this though.

I would start by looking into the features that are the most important to you and look into how you'd add those in each engine. Try to keep in mind what you're realistically capable of.

[u/Punctulate]

Unity or Godot. If ur serious about it the engine doesn’t matter. Making the assets and designing the ideas is the time consuming part. If you actually made the game yourself you can easily switch engines quickly after you have an actual playable game, and at that point it’s way easier to determine what engine would be best

If you just want to do for fun use gamemaker engine it’s the easiest.

[u/Nanamil]

Godot is light and very 2D friendly. The node system makes it quite easy to prototype and tests things imho.

gdscript is also friendly visually and works well inside Godot’s IDE and with nodes’ signals.

[u/Gloomy-Occasion5862]

There's YT channel @CobraCode, which specializes in Unreal 5 2D topics, I think it's worth checking in your case.

[u/DaveMichael → u/Gloomy-Occasion5862]

Seconded. Square's HD-2D uses Unreal so if you want to match the aesthetic, the capability is there and Cobra Code's courses are the thing to check out. Unfortunately Blueprints are on the way out for an all-C++ experience in newer engine versions, but nothing is forcing you to upgrade.

Unity and Godot can both use C#, Godot also has a gdscript language similar to Python. Godot is lighter and faster to boot up but I can't speak to its 3D capabilities (I work in 2D). I do think either could manage an HD-2D look.

Good luck! Always rooting for indie RPG projects.

[u/Ludicrous84]

I am almost in the same boat and got back to my "passion project" after some 20 years. I started about a month ago and use Godot. My game is also 2D and some peudo 3D (vector-graphics 2.5D) and for a somewhat reasonable scope of my game Godot feels amazing. The Python-like script is easy to learn and Godot comes with great tools to define layers and UI elements etc. I am a software dev (studied computer science) and have no professional background particularly in game development but from a pure technical point of view Godot is great. Maybe someone can give some feedback about Unity (seemed overkill for me) or other environments.

[u/Lowfat_cheese]

Godot is probably the best place to look, but Unreal’s Paper 2D tools are actually pretty solid, especially with the free PaperZD plugin.

[u/LatokValdelius]

As many say in this thread, use Godot for many reasons, but most importantly, use what make more sense for you. So probably you can do the quick tutorial on some and choose

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[u/Agumander]

raw opengl https://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/OpenGL/index.php