When developers or organizations need to develop a game, simulation or a similar project, they phase the question of whether or not to use a game engine as well as the question on which one to use. Are all game engines the same or does the architecture change and how is the game design different between various game engines? The objective of this thesis is to research these questions as well as giving a concrete understanding of the impact of picking one engine over the other and how each engine influences the way games are developed and answer some more specific questions regarding architecture and usability. 

A project was designed with the goal of developing a game. This game was developed by two separate teams over a period of 6 weeks, using two different game engines. The development was split into separate iterations done simultaneously between the teams and questionnaires were filled in to gather data. The game engines used for projects had similarities but also things which were different. Each engine offered ways to speed up development by allowing the developer to reuse and distribute changes among objects to reduce work. The differences caused one engine’s code architecture to be more complex than the other while allowing a better code structure as well as adding more time to learn how the engine handles certain things such as collisions.

In conclusion, there is an importance to properly evaluating different game engines depending on the project a developer or organization is creating, not evaluating this properly will impact development speed and project complexity. Even though each engine has their differences, there is no superior game engine as it all depends on the project being developed. The game developed for this project was only touching on certain areas related to 2D games.