Video games represent adventure, entertainment, and the chance to live lives that aren’t our own. These games are carefully coded to bring a digital story to life and draw players into immersive experiences, and at the heart of these games is the game engine. An engine is a software environment used by game developers to facilitate the development of upcoming games.
These gaming engines come preloaded with settings and configurations that simplify development across several programming languages and speed up the game creation process. These incredible engines’ usability has led many developers to build engines that can be reused across multiple games.
Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine is one of the most prolific gaming engines in history. Developed by Epic Games in 1998 for the first Unreal game, it was intended to work almost exclusively with PC games, offering first-person shooting action.
The engine became popular relatively early on due to its versatility, extensive toolkit, and impressive graphics—particularly at the time. Although these features already attracted developers, the creation of the Unreal game series truly pushed the engine and its capabilities into the limelight.
Over time, the engine has undergone countless changes with each new version release. These changes have ensured the engine remains one of the industry’s forerunners and have added new features, such as advanced AI rendering and physics, that make games more realistic and immersive.
In addition to the Unreal series, the engine has been used to create games such as the Gears of War and Bioshock series, Batman: Arkham, and the world-famous battle royale game Fortnite. Each of these has helped the engine gain immense popularity among gamers and developers.
Unity
Like the Unreal Engine, Unity is one of the leading game engines in the industry. Launched in 2005 by Unity Technologies, it was developed as an accessible, user-friendly engine to help developers create games more easily.
Offering a large asset store and intuitive interface, the engine has become increasingly popular among indie and large-scale developers alike. Its ability to work well for cross-platform games has also helped it garner a large following.
Another factor contributing to the engine’s continued success is its willingness to embrace new technologies and provide access to them through updates. Among these are VR and AR features, as well as the ability to code games specifically for mobile platforms.
Games that have helped push Unity into the limelight include Cities: Skylines, the worldwide sensation Among Us, and others like Hearthstone, Monument Valley, and Cuphead. These titles and many more have showcased the engine’s ability to work across platforms.
Source Engine
Launched in 1996 by former Microsoft employees, Valve is best known for its Steam game store. However, the company has also made some incredible games over the years, including Half-Life. Based on Half-Life’s success, the studio developed the Source Engine, which debuted in 2004 with the launch of Counter-Strike: Source.
Immediately capturing the attention of gamers and developers, the engine quickly gained a large following for its robust modding capabilities, realistic physics, and advanced character face animation.
Valve’s development of new games has ensured that the engine has experienced ongoing updates that keep it relevant to newer technologies. These enhancements have also led to numerous community-created games and mods built using the engine.
Although the original Half-Life wasn’t developed using the Source Engine, its sequel, Half-Life 2, was. Other notable games created using the engine include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the Portal series, Team Fortress, and the Left 4 Dead series.
CryEngine
CryEngine is best known for its use in the phenomenal Far Cry series. Although Ubisoft has created games in this series since 2006, the original Far Cry was developed by Crytek, the maker of CryEngine.
Far Cry, the first game released using the engine, was designed to showcase its ability to render graphics with incredible realism. Although the game succeeded on its own due to its storyline and gameplay, the engine’s realistic environments and cutting-edge graphics set it apart from other games at the time.
This made CryEngine popular among many developers, who leveraged the engine’s unique features to create visually stunning titles. Updates to the engine have continued to focus on visuals and creating immersive game experiences.
Although the engine is best known for Far Cry, it has also been used in multiple other successful games. These include the Crysis series, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Hunt: Showdown. Newer versions of Far Cry, including the rumored Far Cry 7, have also used the engine.
Gamebryo
Developed by Numerical Design Limited, which later became Emergent Game Technologies, Gamebryo was launched in the late 1990s as NetImmerse. The engine, designed to support games across numerous genres and platforms, is known for its versatility.
With many developers opting to use Gamebryo, the engine has been further developed to bring new tools and capabilities to studios. This has resulted in an extensive suite of tools for tweaking physics, animation, and in-game AI.
Some of the most popular games built on the engine include internationally acclaimed titles such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Civilization IV, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Each of these makes incredible use of the engine’s capabilities and showcases its many strengths.
Frostbite
Frostbite was first conceived by DICE (Digital Illusions CE) before the studio was purchased by EA (Electronic Arts) in 2006. The engine was publicly launched in 2008 and served as the driving force behind Battlefield: Bad Company. Immediately gaining recognition for its realistic destruction physics, the engine also quickly became lauded for its ability to offer impressive visuals in large-scale environments.
These features attracted many developers, who helped the engine move beyond first-person shooters into sports, RPGs, and other genres. In addition to all Battlefield titles released from 2008 onward, the engine has been used in all recent Need for Speed titles, the Star Wars Battlefront series, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.
