Noel Berry, "Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)":

I genuinely believe making games without a big "do everything" engine can be easier, more fun, and often less overhead. I am not making a "do everything" game and I do not need 90% of the features these engines provide. I am very particular about how my games feel and look, and how I interact with my tools. I often find the default feature implementations in large engines like Unity so lacking I end up writing my own anyway. Eventually, my projects end up being mostly my own tools and systems, and the engine becomes just a vehicle for a nice UI and some rendering...

I read blog posts and tutorials like this all the time. Every few months, I go on a spree of installing and firing up game development tools. I keep kind of wanting to actually end up finishing a game, kind of like how my dad used to make a few fly fishing lures but only ever managed to go fishing every few years. But, do I like reading about this stuff.

And this post snags me, in particular, because one of the reasons I even started poking around with game dev stuff was to learn. And what better way to really just plummet down the rabbit hole than to learn how to make a game engine almost from scratch?

Oh, but in terms of actually finishing things: I can say I made Poke the Mongo for Pico-8! That's at least one finished video game. It's got an itch.io page and an end-game screen and everything. I won't spoil the end screen, though I'm pretty sure I only know one other person who's ever seen it.