Hey guys!
Yesterday one of my friends told me that Unity isn't the right way to go if I want to get serious about game development. He mentioned that "all games are alike", which is, in some regard true (all the same-asset-pack-using shovelware for example), but I brought up Thomas was Alone, Cuphead, Firewatch and SUPERHOT, which are all great examples of Unity done right.
What do you think? Is it a good choice to learn Unity, or should I stick with other languages?

Depends on many parameters: game genre, budget, coding ability....

Unity is a proprietary game engine. It gives you many tools to create a game and there's nothing wrong with using it. Also, there are other game engines worth checking out. When you know what kind of game you want to develop, you'll know which suits you best.

What other languages are you thinking of? If you're thinking of pure programming languages (C, Java, python...), then it is much more work. You need to learn the language and the build the game engine from scratch.

There is also a nice game creator called GDevelop (http://compilgames.net) which I find to be simple and great for prototyping.

I've tried smaller languages like Stencyl, HaxeFlixel and Puzzlescript. Construct and Game Maker were on my list, but those don't seem as complex as Unity. I'm thinking in games along the lines of Witness, Firewatch, Gone Home or The Stanley Parable. So walking simulators (not using as a negative term). :D

I'll have a look at GDevelop, thanks for the tip :)

I haven't seen that one either so thanks from me as well. :)

I think your friend is outright wrong about that, but I don't blame him - Unity made IMHO a very poor marketing decision by using their logo as a mark of shame for anyone who wants to develop games without spending any money, whereas anyone dedicated enough to actually pay for a proper Unity license gets to release their game WITHOUT a Unity logo. So with most of the good Unity games most people don't even know that they're made with Unity; only the bad games get associated with the engine. If they had used their logo as a badge of honour instead (like Havoc, for example) then public perception of the engine would be much better today.

That being said, it's an excellent engine that is more than suitable for almost anything you're likely to work on. I personally lean slightly more toward Unreal Engine but Unity is absolutely worth learning.

Remember: Unity games can look like virtually anything. Hearthstone was made with Unity, and it looks nothing like Pillars of Creation. Same with Kerbal Space Program, Cities: Skylines, HuniePop, Inside, Broforce, Superhot and so on.

Ah, often a question asked in different ways on different forums. There isn't an answer, relies on too many factors. Who are you, what skills, what purpose etc. Unity is an engine, a tool, are you a craftsman to weild that tool. Will you spend the countless hours, the many failures, to get something out the door, 99% of wannabe developers aren't and even professionals fail a fair bit.
What skills do you have, do you know any programming, do you have any artistic skills, what about story writing? Me I have programmed in numerous languages over the years, am a programmer by trade, can't draw a stickman, would likely struggle to write good C# (which is one of the languages Unity uses) nowadays as rarely use it.
What have you done in the past, have you tried modding?
There are a load of resources out there, on all the main topics, what did you want to achieve? If its something small and realistic, maybe choose one of the simpler engines to start, even gamemake has quite a userbase.

I tried Unity out when it came to PC, seemed quite nice and powerful. There is the asset store alongside that, wether that is a bonus or not, it put me off it. But is has a fair few prefabs to get going.

My suggestion is start with one specific area, say learning a lanugage throughly or learn to draw etc. Maybe join a modding team to get a feel for how much time and effort it takes to get things done.

As a note, godotengine is quite a nice free tool, which now has c# scripting. If I ever get any time I am looking further into that. Nope, never come across that one. Will have a look, although I as a programmer I find the non-coding ones limiting.

Unity or Unreal seem to be the way to go. I've restarted learning Unity and C# the past few months, lots of good info and tutorials out there. I'd recommend Unity and C#.

Of course, you can always "shop around" for what engine works best for you, or eventually create your own.

I think Unity is an amazing engine regardless of what some people say. I'm no programmer or game designer, but the majority of games I played built on it are very stable and perform very well, even on low-end hardware.

A small list of personal favorites and very successful games built on Unity:

Hollow Knight
Pillars of Eternity
Yooka Laylee
Dreamfall Chapters
Hand of Fate
Hyper Light Drifer

Not to forget it's also packed with features: Multi-platform, Support for almost every graphics API, lots of tools. I'd say the engine becomes what you make of it, it is of course not perfect and I've seen quite a few games with a problem which was repairable only with an engine update. If you feel comfortable using it then keep at it.

Also, another engine I can suggest looking into is Godot, it's fully free and fully open source.

Cities: Skylines also use Unity.

Yeah, the question is a bit too general, but I can always get a good idea from the answers anyway, that's why I like GOG's forum :) I've attended a mathematics branch of a university, so the logical base is there for me, we also learned C# and Python there. I also dug into some languages on my own before (Stencyl, HaxeFlixel, Puzzlescript). I'd say I'm pretty good at writing, but unfortunately no luck with drawing. :(
I made three actual games in Puzzlescript and tried small modifications before (Commander Keen for example).
So there, a bit more specified information :)

Godot sounds interesting, I will check it out.
Thank you for your response :)

No probs. Yes, godot is pretty good, and free, and its not even an install, so has some benefits. It sounds like you have a good background for the programmer part then. What you can do is develop the mechanics and use stock art, or even just plain shapes and colors, then if the mechanics works out and it feels good, maybe even contract an artist or two to provide the artwork to replace the basic shapes. You can also try out the free version of Unity, its higher functins are limited to the pay version, or your could rent it per month I believe. Unreal editor you can also get free or low cost, but that may be a bit more complicated/harder to learn.
Good luck with it.

Thank you for the response :)
Another good question is, should I take a course (not many options are available here in Hungary, and the few within reach are expensive) or go the autodidact way, and learn from the seemingly infinite tutorials out there?