In this section we’ll take a look at the costs of development and publication using Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4. Let’s start arguably the biggest concern of an indie developer…Īs an independent game developer, your budget is likely very low, if not completely nonexistent. If you already have a favorite game engine that you use dogmatically, then you may learn something new that could potentially change your mind. If you’re a would-be indie game developer and you don’t know which game engine better suits your needs as a developer, then this guide should help you make your decision. By the time you’re done reading this guide, you should know more about the cost of use and scripting of Unity and Unreal, enough so to inform your decision to use one or the other. This guide will walk through the licensing costs and scripting methods found in the aforementioned engines, highlighting the particularities found in each one. These two factors of game development are ones that have been greatly innovated upon in the latest iterations of the Unity and Unreal engines.

Programming has also acted as a barrier of entry for game development. Self-funded games and games with small budgets are the bread and butter of indie games, but development costs hold a tremendous amount of power over whether or not a game is ever made. Game engines like Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) provide the general public with a potential to make great looking games that has historically only been available to industry-proven development studios. We’ve entered an era in game development that is equivalent to the time of the Super 8 camera for film.

Unity engine source code