Ask HN: Which framework/book to get started into GameDev?

6 recvonline 5 5/31/2025, 10:05:03 PM

I am a seasoned engineer, worked up and down the stack (from mainframes to servers and frontends). I always liked playing games as well.

I am looking for a new "hobby", or something I can continuously build and improve, without it being another web application.

I can do Go, Rust, Python, JavaScript. A bit of C. But no C#, C++.

I know of Unity, but I haven't find a clear: That's the path for a newcomer to "publish" their first game. I don't care much about monetizing it, I just want to have fun and build stuff.

Is Unity the best way to go?

Comments (5)

jay_kyburz · 3d ago

With Unity you need to learn a lot about how Unity does things. All the tutorials will tech you how to assemble components and wire them up using the editor. You'll build a scene of game objects with c# scripts attached to them. It can be very fast to get a simple game working.

I imagine it's a little like learning Photoshop or Flash where you attach scripts to different parts of your image.

I use Unity all day for my day job, but I don't use it for my side projects. It's big, slow, and clunky. It's not really all that fun.

For my side projects I prefer a code only solution and have played around with Raylib, Love2d, Pixi.js, and Three.js depending if I want 2d/3d or browser/ standalone.

krapp · 3d ago

I wouldn't touch Unity after their recent behavior. Try out Godot. It's FOSS, there are forks supporting different languages and your projects won't be beholden to the whims of a single company trying to squeeze money from you.

If you want to try something more low level, I'd suggest SDL3, with whatever language you like.

proc0 · 3d ago

Try Raylib. It doesn't sound like you'll need much more than progressively using more advanced libraries, and Raylib is an excellent beginner graphics library. You'll want C or C++ even though it has bindings for a lot of languages, but with C/C++ you can then go to the more lower level libs.

slater · 3d ago

I'd give Löve2D or Godot a go

msie · 3d ago

Yes, and use C#. Just keep at it for a while. At least a month. If you don't like it you can change platforms, languages.