I'm not using any game engine, just Replit.com - an AI agent does all of the web coding for me.
Not an easy question! There are tons of engines out there, but if you're starting out, I’d definitely recommend checking out these two because they’re very beginner-friendly and great for actually finishing projects:
RPG Maker
RPG Maker is kind of the “classic” beginner engine. It comes with built-in assets, a visual editor, and systems for maps, battles, dialogue, etc, so you can start making a game without coding.
You can go deeper with scripting (JavaScript in newer versions), but you don’t have to. It’s great if you want to focus on design and storytelling first.
Twine
Twine is amazing if you're just starting or want to prototype ideas quickly. You basically build your game like a flowchart of story nodes, and it exports directly to HTML so you can share it instantly. You don’t need to code at all to begin, but you can add logic, variables, and even JavaScript later if you want more complexity.
So in conclusion, If you want something more “game-like” with visuals and systems, go with RPG Maker. If you want to experiment, tell stories, or start today with zero friction, go with Twine.
Curious: what kind of game are you thinking about making?
Unreal Engine, and its major reason is that I basically have a reading/writing disability that makes trying to code the normal way extremely difficult and mentally painful for me. So, thanks to Unreal's very robust blueprint system, I have been able to create the games without this issue.
And yes, I know engines like Godot and Unity have their own form of visual scripting through plugins, but I don’t have any interest in touching Unity do to a few reasons, and for Godot, the plugin is still being worked on and isn’t as robust as Unreal’s blueprints at the moment.
At this point every game I shared publicly was made with base Java. The weak part is that I'm distributing the games with the JRE which takes a lot more place than the other files so the games take more place than it should. That it belongs to some tech douchebag nowadays isn't great either. Therefore I might sometimes switch to something else.
godotjs.github.io , have you/any succeed, main.ts that compiles tsc to main.js with v8 or quickjs-ng? for faster godot that runs scripts as javascript in wasm export webgl2 browser (instead of slow gdscript, i got it only inside godot httpd hosting but not export Release, try this first pls. ) Next i try Godot Jenova C++ jenova-framework.github.io
I use Phaser 3, since its open-source libraries are included within Github Copilot. It takes a bit to learn the limitations, especially when working with AI tools, but the payoff is absolutely worth it! I also use AI tools like Suno ($10/month), which creates the music for my games, and PixelLabs AI ($24/month) to create my animations and characters. In “KickBrawl: World Tour,” I even used Google Gemini to create the backgrounds needed for the game (on the free tier, nonetheless, thanks to a free trial from Coursera’s Google AI certification course).