When it comes to prototyping character-based games, the tools a designer chooses can make or break the early stages of development. In this post, we sit down with Sponger Hammer’s very own Game Designer, Nicolas Tonratti, who recently made the jump from Unity to Unreal Engine—and has been exploring the differences between the two firsthand. So is the perfect candidate to ask some questions on how he has experienced working on both Unity and Unreal. They share an honest look at the pros, cons, and unexpected surprises that come with switching engines mid-career. From faster iteration to messy blueprints, here’s what stood out the most in Nicolas’s transition.
What did you prefer during the prototype stages between the two engines?
I think on one side, the character based part of what im doing now in the early stages of a prototype in Unreal has been way easier than in Unity. Unreal is made for character based game development. So in Unreal, there are many things you don’t have to start entirely from scratch whereas in Unity, you have to. There is a part in Unreal where making it in Unity it’s easier, like the part recently when creating a texture for tiles, in Unreal it was quite difficult to create this structure. I have only been using Unreal since September till now. All the knowledge that I have gotten, it’s amazing how fast and easy it is to develop. And I think I am not going to go back to Unity anytime soon.
How are you finding working with blueprints in Unreal vs the tools you have used in Unity?
As a designer, it is very easy to work with the blueprints in Unreal. In Unreal, I can make things without relying on a programmer telling me exactly how to do them. It is really nice to make things happen inside the game without having to rely on “how am I coding?” or “what’s the full structure of things?” because it’s super visual.
For the projects I have worked on throughout my career in Unity, we always have needed to make tools for everything. So people don’t have to get into meetings all the time, which is nice, but you have to do it from scratch every time. Or find a plugin and pray the plugin will not destroy your project within six months.
Is this the same for Unreal?
For me, I think most of the designers that I know would much rather work with blueprints rather than coding. If they’re not programmers turned into designers, that is, otherwise, this could be the other way around. For me, working with less code is the best.
What was your biggest challenge with Unity?
In Unity, as you use code a lot, everything can overlap. So many times, you have a character moving, and from another side, it’s overlapping with another script. You have to take care of a lot of the code that you have. Unreal does a lot of these things in the background for you. Overall, I would say Unreal is more game designer-friendly.
What is your biggest challenge with Unreal?
First of all I started with no knowledge of Unreal. I used it briefly before for prototyping and stuff, but I did not get too much into it. Inside of Unreal blueprints can sometimes be too easy to work with, so things can get very messy very fast. Knowing how to organise yourself and structure everything inside so you don’t find yourself in 6 months with a spaghetti blueprint and nobody knows what is happening.
You’ve been working on AI quite a bit. What did you use, and how does it compare to Unity?
For the AI that I worked with before in Unity, the whole system was made as a tool for that specific project. For this current project, I am working with the tools that Unreal gives you for enemy behaviors and these types of things. This I found easier, but now it is one of my current tasks to get into some new features that Unreal has that make designing AI way more efficient. It was called ‘behavior trees’; now I think it’s called ‘behavior states.’
How does blueprint based workflow compare to Unity’s? What the strengths and weaknesses of both?
I’m glad I come from using Unity, as now I know that it can be a bit more complicated performance-wise compared to Unreal. A weakness for blueprints would be, If you don’t know that many things in blueprints can be performance-heavy, this can impact workflow. For example, if you expand a blueprint, it will become a mess as you will be playing the game in 12fps, and you don’t know why; you soon realise it’s because everything is running in the background, and it shouldn’t be. Yesterday I was talking to some guys about it, saying that for me it can be too easy to make things work sometimes with blueprints, so you forget to see what is performing well or not. The good thing is that you can create things super fast using blueprints. Like yesterday, I had an idea for one ability, got it made quickly, and I had another one done in half an hour today. In unity, it would be unthinkable to put something up that works and does not break with everything else within the same timeframe.
Conclusion
Nicolas Tonratti’s experience highlights the evolving landscape of game development tools, especially when it comes to balancing creativity with technical demands. While Unity offered familiarity and flexibility, Unreal Engine’s blueprint system and built-in support for character-driven development opened up faster, more designer-friendly workflows. Despite some challenges—like blueprint complexity and performance pitfalls—the shift to Unreal has proven to be a game-changer. For designers looking to prototype quickly without being bogged down by code, this case makes a strong argument for giving Unreal a serious look.
