Shifting Away from Unreal Engine

I want to be transparent about a pretty big decision regarding the development of the game.

I’ve decided to move away from Unreal Engine and continue development on a different engine.

This wasn’t a quick or easy choice. I spent a long time trying to make it work. Unreal is incredibly powerful, and there are parts of it I genuinely like. The networking side in particular has been solid, and the tests we ran on Steam went really well. From that perspective, I’m happy with what we achieved so far.

But over time, the downsides started to outweigh the benefits for this specific project.

The biggest issue is iteration speed. Everything feels heavy. Adding new content, maintaining systems, and optimizing performance takes way more time than it should. Even compiling alone takes a lot of time and constantly breaks the flow.

On top of that, I kept running into situations where something would randomly break without me even touching it. Systems that were completely unrelated would start behaving differently, bugs would appear out of nowhere, and it becomes very hard to trust your own build. That kind of instability slows everything down a lot.

UI has also been a major pain point. The pipeline is just not enjoyable to work with, and it makes even simple things feel overcomplicated.

Another big factor is platform support and builds. Compiling for multiple platforms in Unreal has been a constant struggle. Getting everything working across Windows, Linux, macOS, and potentially consoles requires a lot of setup, extra tooling, and time spent dealing with things that are not directly related to the game itself. It adds a lot of overhead and slows development down significantly.

In the new engine, this process is much more straightforward. Cross-platform support is far more streamlined, and most platforms are supported more natively without needing to jump through as many hoops. This means faster builds, less friction, and more time actually spent improving the game instead of managing the build pipeline.

I’ll be honest, I am a perfectionist when it comes to how things feel and perform. If something is off, even slightly, it bothers me. And right now, I don’t feel confident I can reach the level of quality I want using this setup.

You can see similar struggles in other games built on the same tech where small changes can sometimes cause unexpected issues across the whole project. That kind of fragility is something I want to avoid long term.

So instead of forcing it and risking the long term health of the game, I’m making the switch now while it still makes sense.

The good news is that this is not a reset. I’ve already ported around 99% of the game to the new engine, and most of the core code is already in place and working. What’s taking time right now is mainly redoing and polishing 3D models and assets to match the new pipeline.

What does this mean going forward?

I’m actively working on the 1.0 version, and it’s going to include a lot of new content and improvements across the board. This change is part of making sure the game can actually grow the way I envision it, with faster updates, better performance, and more flexibility in design.

I know engine switches can sound scary, but this is a step towards a better and more stable future for the game.

Thanks for sticking around and supporting the project. More updates soon, pinky promise.

Love,

coke.