Unreal Engine 5 is one of the most popular game engines on the market currently. Following in its previous iterations’ footsteps, Unreal Engine 5 is considered to be one of the most powerful game engines available. For AAA game development projects especially, Unreal Engine 5 has a reputation for being powerful, versatile, and reliable.
Games made with Unreal Engine 5 typically look phenomenal and have a certain robustness to them. It’s widely adopted for use in all kinds of game development projects. Unreal Engine 5 games can be anything from 2D platformers to 3D RPGs and VR horror experiences, and anything else in between.
What is Unreal Engine 5?
Unreal Engine 5, as previously mentioned, is a popular powerhouse of a gaming engine widely adopted for use in AAA game development projects. It supports a huge variety of platforms, including all consoles, PC, and VR and AR platforms. It’s the fifth main iteration of the Unreal Engine family of game engines with a history spanning over 30 years.
Features of Unreal Engine 5
One of the most well-regarded aspects of Unreal Engine 5 is its sheer number of available features. From world-building to lighting and much more, Unreal Engine 5 boasts numerous features that enable developers to build the best possible games. Some of its most notable features include but aren’t limited to the following.
The Unreal Editor
The Unreal Editor is a comprehensive development environment for building levels and managing in-game assets. It supports multiple simultaneous users, allowing teams to collaborate and make changes in real-time.
Landscape and Terrain Tools
Unreal Engine 5 games benefit from impressive open worlds made possible using the Landscape system. This system allows adding multiple layers for height, painting, and more.
World Partition
The World Partition tool was one of Unreal Engine 5’s major selling points after its announcement. It allows worlds to be divided into a grid system, making it easier than ever to create sections of your game worlds for your team to work on without overlapping.
Niagra Particles and Visual Effects
The Niagra visual effects editor represents the next step in Unreal Engine’s game VFX evolution, allowing for even more incredible visual effects to be created compared to Unreal Engine 4. Particle effects can be adjusted so that they even react to your game’s music and sound effects.
Advanced Artificial Intelligence
AI-controlled characters can be given a whole new level of intelligence with Unreal Engine 5, allowing for optimal pathfinding that updates in real time and smarter decision-making.
Unreal Audio Engine
The Unreal Audio Engine includes a veritable treasure trove of features to enhance your game’s audio, including physical audio propagation modeling, OSC support, layered sound concurrency, and much more.
AAA Games Made with Unreal Engine 5
Many Unreal Engine 5 games occupy the AAA gaming space. The biggest names in the gaming industry have been adopters of the Unreal Engine series of game engines, and Unreal Engine 5 is no exception.
Unreal Engine 5 games feature incredibly demanding titles such as Black Myth: Wukong, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the Silent Hill 2 remake, and countless other examples. These examples are wildly different from one another, but the one thing they have in common is their generation-defining visual fidelity that was made possible by using Unreal Engine 5.
Indie Games Made with Unreal Engine 5
Though Unreal Engine 5 is most closely associated with AAA game development, there have been numerous independent titles that leverage the engine’s power to great effect. Palworld is a prominent example of a title that went on to receive a positive reception amid its ongoing early access period.
For developers looking to avail of Unreal Engine 5 for their indie games, the engine comes with a range of out-of-the-box tools to assist in game creation without extensive programming, plus several rendering features that support a wide range of visual styles.
Mobile Games Made with Unreal Engine 5
Mobile games are fully supported by Unreal Engine 5. The engine supports platform-specific tools, so whether you’re developing for Android or iOS, Unreal Engine 5 has you fully supported. Games like Tower of Fantasy and King Arthur: Legends Rise have thrived on mobile, partly thanks to Unreal Engine 5 powering them.
The Pros of Unreal Engine 5
Unreal Engine 5 boasts numerous positive aspects for developers to consider when researching game engines for their development projects. With its incredible amount of features and wide-ranging platform support, Unreal Engine 5 can be a fantastic choice of game engine for many developers regardless of their project’s genre and overall visual styles.
Potential for High-Quality Games
The list of high-quality games made with Unreal Engine 5 is almost countless at this point. Because of Unreal Engine 5’s capacity for incredible visuals and realism, games made with the engine look second to none and provide an unparalleled level of immersion. Its feature set is what drives the enviable quality of Unreal Engine 5 games – its post-processing effects, rendering capabilities, weather systems, and many more features.
Adaptable and Versatile
Unreal Engine 5 boasts a few ways in which development studios can actually build their games. C++ is supported for game development programming, plus Python can be used for editor automation. Programming in game development is naturally highly flexible and can be used to deeply customize games in every single aspect. Though there is naturally a learning curve associated with learning C++ or any other programming language, it’s advantageous to have a team of programmers so that your game can be created exactly how you want it to be.
Conversely, Unreal Engine 5 also has a groundbreaking feature called Blueprints Visual Scripting that allows developers to create games using a node-based system, foregoing the need to write even a single line of code. This is an ideal option for developers with limited programming knowledge, or even solo developers who need to make the most of their time and get their work done efficiently.
Realism with Unreal Engine 5
As far as realism is concerned, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better example than Unreal Engine 5 for providing realistic visuals, interactions, and behaviors. Its physics simulation is second to none, as are its tools for animation. Crafting realistic movements, actions, and interactions is made all the more convenient with its built-in features.
The Cons of Unreal Engine 5
Though Unreal Engine 5 is undoubtedly a fantastic game engine, there are some points to consider if you’re deliberating over what game engine to use. It’s perfectly suitable for many types of games and developers, but there could be some situations where using Unreal Engine 5 is impossible, inadvisable, or otherwise not ideal.
Unreal Engine 5’s Learning Curve
Unreal Engine 5 is nothing if not an in-depth and comprehensive game engine. This is a positive aspect, as the development possibilities with Unreal Engine 5 are limitless, but the other side of this is that it’s considered to have a steep learning curve in some respects. Especially for game development newcomers, the prospect of opening up Unreal Engine 5 can be a daunting task. It has countless valuable features, but getting to the point of understanding them and their functionality thoroughly can be time-consuming and require unwavering commitment.
Mastering Unreal Engine 5 and its constituent components is a difficult path. Its interfaces alone can be confusing at first, let alone figuring out how its many features work. Learning Unreal Engine 5 is undoubtedly fulfilling, but it’s worth noting that figuring it out requires time and effort.
Unreal Engine 5 Pricing
Unreal Engine 5 is completely free up to a point, which is a wonderful thing for individuals learning how to use the game engine and developing their first games, or for more experienced developers looking to round out their game engine expertize. There is, however, a clause with Unreal Engine 5 that any game that accrues $1 million in gross product revenue is subject to paying royalties. The other option is to sign up for a seat-based plan where users pay a certain amount per seat per year.
This pricing would naturally place a financial burden on developers that might be insurmountable for some. This might be a wall for solo developers or small studios which could redirect their interest towards other game engines. For larger studios, pricing is less likely to be a problem, but it’s highly advised to carefully consider Unreal Engine 5’s plans before committing to anything.
Unreal Engine 5 Compared to Unity
Unity is Unreal Engine 5’s most direct competitor. Unity is different in some respects from Unreal Engine 5. Many developers swear by Unity’s facilities to create 2D games over Unreal Engine 5. Though it might have a hard time competing with Unreal Engine 5 in terms of sheer visuals, Unity offers incredible versatility in supporting pretty much every platform imaginable that runs games, plus a couple of more niche platforms like QNX.
Another strength of Unity is its community. Unity is lauded for its impressive community that spans multiple official and unofficial forums and channels. When in doubt about anything related to using Unity, you can be guaranteed that there is an answer out there somewhere.
Moreover, Unity’s Asset Store similarly receives heaps of praise. It boasts incalculable numbers of assets, from audio tracks to models, textures, and much more, many of which are free to use. This is an extremely useful resource for placeholder assets or even assets to use in a final, polished game.
Depending on your studio, its size, and your game development goals, Unity’s pricing might be more applicable. It has several tiers of pricing, including a free tier, which is ideal for anyone who’s learning to use the engine or working on solo/personal projects. With the higher tier paid plans, its benefits increase accordingly, including platform support, access to collaboration tools, and more.
Contact Magic Media to learn more about our Unreal Engine 5 game development services, plus our dozens of other services for gaming, entertainment, and tech projects, including full-cycle game development , game VFX , game porting , and many more. Reach out to Magic Media, and let’s create magic!
