   game engine recommendations
  I am in the market for a game engine for an indie developer that will do 2D graphics, 3D is not a requirement.  I have looked at Torque Game Builder and Unity a little bit.  I was wondering if anyone here has a recommendation for a good, affordable game engine for an indie developer.  I would be willing to spend up to a couple hundred dollars on it, if its worth the money.Thanks.   
  FlatRedBall is a free engine for XNA, which works for Windows/360.If you want to see a game that has used it, there aren't much, but a game that won the Dream Build Play used it, A.R.E.S.http://www.flatredball.com/frb/blog/   ;  http://www.asantee.net/ethanon/i like this one   ;  I was using FlatRedBall. It was good enough for me, but to be honest, there was nothing special about it.Look at: http://hge.relishgames.com/I'm currently using it and it works very well. It's mainly for 2D games, works on Windows platforms (it's using DX), but I've seen OpenGL ports and of course it's free.   ;  Are you looking for full game engine (with things like pre-defined game objects, path-finding, networking, physics and so on) or would you be satisfied with a library that handles most of the hardware and OS interfacing? If so, you could take a look at SFML.   ;  I should have been more clear in the original post.  I guess what i am really looking for is more of a full fledged game engine / IDE for games such as torque, that includes a WYSIWYG level / world editor, a drag and drop GUI editor, physics handling, as well as graphics, sound, and network handling.  Basically, I've found Torque, Unity, and C4 that provide this functionality.Unity Pro is too much at $1200 for a license, I'm really looking at Torque 2D engine and C4.  I also want to make sure that some major games have been released by them and that they will be around for a while.  Torque has the edge here because it does have some games i've actually heard of released for it but that doesn't necessarily mean its better then the C4 engine.Does anyone have experience with these engines or opinions of them?  Or know of other engines that contain this functionality that i just haven't found yet?  I found a bad review of the torque engine but it was dated 2004 so that doesn't really count anymore.Thanks.   ;  If you haven't seen it then you might want to take a look at the 3D engine database. You'll find reviews for all the engines you mention.   ;  Thanks, that is a really good reference.  From that I picked out 4 engines, Torque, C4, Unity, and Esenthel.  My plan is to use each for about a month, try out the tutorials, look through the documentation, maybe make a simple game, like breakout or something on each of them, see how they work and what i think about them and then make the final decision.  I don't think this is overkill since it is a decent investment at a couple hundred dollars and I will be using it for a while and really getting to know it, so i really want one that will fit well.Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on any of these 4 engines?  Any advice is appreciated.Thanks.   ;  This is not an engine but a framework. If you liked Popcap Games you might want to take a peek on the Popcap Framework. Note I haven't used it but it exists for a long time.   