Game engine

Imagine you and your friends love playing make-believe games where you pretend to be characters in a story. Sometimes you play pirates, sometimes you are knights fighting dragons, and sometimes you explore magical lands.

Now imagine that you want to make one of these games into a real video game that you can play on a computer, phone, or game console.

To do this, you’ll need a game engine.

A game engine is like a special toolbox that helps you make a video game. It has different types of tools that can help you with things like building the environment (what the world looks like), adding characters (like pirates or knights), making them move around (like walking, jumping or swimming), adding sounds, and lighting the world (to make it look real).

Think of the game engine like a construction set. Just like a construction set has blocks, screws, and tools for building things, the game engine has programming code, graphics libraries, physics engines, and special editors to help make a game.

The game engine makes it easier for developers to create games because it provides all the building blocks needed to make the game. Instead of the developers having to create everything from scratch, they can use the tools provided by the game engine to speed up their work.

Once the game engine is used to create a game, players can download or buy the game and play it on their device.

So, just like you and your friends use your imagination and “toolbox” to create make-believe games, game developers use a game engine to build real video games that we can play and enjoy.