Nice article, engines are bloated and introduce so many overheads. If you don't intend to ship any AAA games, consider investing your times to learn code-first game frameworks like libGDX, MonoGame, love2d,... or even lower level stuffs like SDL, bgfx, opengl which are good enough for almost any cases. A bit higher learning curve is expected but it won't hide anything from you, or bury you under tons of bloated abstractions.
Nobody seems to consider that doing it yourself, requires you implement it at least as efficiently as the commercial engine did, otherwise you're just creating a worse-performing implementation that seems to behave just like a bloated engine does.
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For more context, I've developed over 200 games[0] using libGDX and threejs. I've learnt so much from working with code-oriented frameworks that are closer to the system APIs. I can never imagine if I could do all that in today full-blown game engines in term of effectiveness and development speed.
[0]: https://ookigame.com
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I’d highly recommend going with SDL if it’s 2D. IMO libraries like MonoGame, Love2D, LibGDX only offer small conveniences over SDL with big negative tradeoffs, sacrificing portability, quality of libraries, and conventions. The downsides of using C++ are now heavily mitigated with the use AI tools.
I could never jell with C++ until I had Cursor hold my hand (especially around the build system), and now I feel like I am developing games with a razor sharp knife that I could never before access. The patterns associated working directly with memory suddenly clicked and now it’s the only I want to build games.
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I've been building some stuff with love2D for a while now, more a hobby than anything else, and I've really enjoyed the process. Nothing really crazy, just a 2D platformer.
I think that if I were making something in 3D or I were more serious I'd use an engine, but I've found that I get more satisfaction from building tools than from learning how to use tools that other people have built.