The hottest Game Engines Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics
The Bottom Feeder • 994 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
  1. The Queen's Wish series was finished with a free epilogue DLC, but its commercial run was mixed: the first game’s Kickstarter succeeded while the second game bombed, and remasters were used to stabilize finances.
  2. The games tried bold innovations—a family-and-royalty-focused narrative, mission-based tactical combat, and an empire-simulation with crafting and fort upgrades that tie systems together.
  3. The biggest failures were the visuals and exposure: poor graphics, weak marketing, and design changes that alienated longtime fans hurt sales, teaching the creator to prioritize a unified visual style and balance innovation with retaining customers.
The GameDiscoverCo newsletter • 235 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
  1. The solo-developed 'incremental' game Gnorp Apologue sold over 120k copies in a month on Steam.
  2. The game attracted players and YouTubers with unexpected upgrades, swift scaling, and adorable pixel art helpers.
  3. The developer priced the game low at $6.99 to make it accessible and enjoyable for players, leading to its unexpected success.
Rings of Saturn • 29 implied HN points • 06 Dec 25
  1. The GameCube port removed several advanced graphics features from the original Xbox build, leaving rougher visuals and an inconsistent framerate compared to the technical demo of the Xbox version.
  2. Entering the player name GASTON or IDKFA triggers an undocumented cheat that starts on the world map, unlocks every stage, enables a Cheat Menu, and grants $99 to buy all cheats.
  3. The hidden cheat was found by inspecting emulator memory and reverse-engineering the game (tracing a case-insensitive string compare to cheat logic), and IDKFA is a clear nod to Doom’s famous cheat while GASTON’s reference is unknown.
Deus In Machina • 72 implied HN points • 28 Dec 23
  1. Valve's Source Engine evolved from a modified Quake engine to the renowned Source engine, powering successful games like Half-Life and Team Fortress.
  2. Valve introduced the GoldSrc and Source engines to separate stable and developmental codebases, enabling continued development without affecting existing games.
  3. The Source engine underwent major updates over the years, leading to the Orange Box update with significant graphical enhancements, and eventually paving the way for the development of Source 2.
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Load-bearing Tomato • 16 implied HN points • 21 Aug 24
  1. In Unreal Engine 5, Actors and Components are the main building blocks. Actors are objects in the game world, while Components add specific features to those Actors.
  2. Inheritance is a key concept in creating different types of objects. You can create child classes for specific behaviors while still sharing common features from a parent class.
  3. Functions and Events help organize code. Use Functions for reusable code and Events for actions triggered by certain events in your game.