Whether it be a personal bias, project requirement, or maybe for the sake of trying something new; choosing a game engine to use for a project or endeavor will certainly bring a lot of differing opinions from many people. In this article, I (Kyle Bardiau) will discuss some of the engines I prefer to use when I decide to work on both personal and professional projects..
1. Unity
I was introduced to Unity a few years back when it was just another engine and since then Unity have stepped up its game and is starting to become an indie favorite due to its low-cost, huge asset store, and the fact that it is more friendly to programmers than other engines.
I suggest to any one who is looking to get their hands dirty game development for the first time to start here. You will be able to make small playable prototypes by yourself in Unity far easier than other engines, such as the next two editors I'm about to bring up.
2. CryEngine
I find that CryEngine is one of the more awesome editors that has a lot of little neat tools and tricks. This editor is one of the more fun I've worked with but is very complex to bring out the true beauty and power of this engine compared to others.
If you want to learn what it's like to get down and dirty in some big boy editors and create quick, generic first person shooter levels, you might find this editor more to your liking. If you're willing to put more work into it, you can code in your own game-play to make a game of any genre: i.e. a Tower Defense game or another genre of your fancy; but the learning curve for doing so is much steeper than other engines.
3. Unreal Development Kit aka UDK
One of the more popular, as well as a favorite of mine, is the UDK. In my experience this was one of the easier editors to pick up. Using UDK is never a bad choice as it's an industry-standard and the majority of games you may have played are developed with Epic's Unreal technology.
If you're looking to learn how those big AAA games get made or want to start on a smaller project, I suggest picking up UDK as this editor can produce projects ranging from a simple indie game to AAA within the same tool set.
Conclusion
These are the main three engines I have come to know, and in my experience if you were to give these engines a go you will start learning the similarities across all engines. Once you understand these similarities such as working with the concepts of levels, game-play, and art content, you will find that you can pick up any other editor very easily and the issue of choosing an engine to use for your next project will become obvious and you'll be one step closer to reading the Matrix, like Tank.
