Making video games in 2025 (without an engine)

I genuinely believe making games without a big “do everything” engine can be easier, more fun, and often less overhead. I am not making a “do everything” game and I do not need 90% of the features these engines provide. I am very particular about how my games feel and look, and how I interact with my tools. I often find the default feature implementations in large engines like Unity so lacking I end up writing my own anyway. Eventually, my projects end up being mostly my own tools and systems, and the engine becomes just a vehicle for a nice UI and some rendering…

At which point, why am I using this engine? What is it providing me? Why am I letting a tool potentially destroy my ability to work when they suddenly make unethical and terrible business decisions? Or push out an update that they require to run my game on consoles, that also happens to break an entire system in my game, forcing me to rewrite it? Why am I fighting this thing daily for what essentially becomes a glorified asset loader and editor UI framework, by the time I’m done working around their default systems?
↫ Noel Berry

Interesting and definitely unique perspective, as I feel most game developers just pick one of the existing big engines and work from there. I’m not saying either option is wrong, but I do feel like the dependence on the popular engines can potentially harm the game industry as a whole, as it reduced diversity, drains valuable knowledge and expertise, and leaves developers – especially smaller ones – at the mercy of a few big players.

Perhaps not every game needs to be made in Unity or Unreal.