Unity is a great piece of software for indie developers and game studios alike. With Unity software, you can create both 3D and 2D games. Unity comes with a variety of tools and assets that allows you to create compelling games.
Here is more on whether Unity is actually good for 2D games – and why it is good for 2D games.
Is Unity good for 2d games?
Unity is great for creating 2D games, it comes with a variety of tools and assets for developers to create high-end 2D games. Unity provides developers with a selection of tools and features such as 2D sprite creation, a powerful 2D physics engine, character mechanims, layering graphics, and the ability to publish your 2D game. For 2D game creation, Unity is a very powerful platform with a wide range of templates, assets, and extensions that help you in your game creation journey.
Unity is not only for 3D games. You can create some superb 2D indie games. The developers behind Unity Software are not blind to the 2D game developer market.
Some glorious examples of 2D games created in Unity are, Cuphead, Hollowknight, and The Procession to Calvary to name a few.
Reasons why Unity is good for 2D Game creation
- It has a well-stocked asset store with many assets dedicated to 2D game creation.
- A helpful community with experience in 2D games.
- The Unity platform also comes with a host of tutorials dedicated to 2D game creation.
- You can easily switch between 2D and 3D game creation modes – or even 2.5d!
- Light controls, sprite creation, and add colliders to your 2d game characters.
- Create various animations for your 2D sprites as part of the Unity Workflow.
Is Unity good for indie 2d game creation?
Unity is an excellent tool for indie 2D game creation – you don’t need to be a game studio to create great games in Unity. Unity provides independent (indie) game developers with a wide range of features and tools to build high-quality 2D games quickly and efficiently.
Unity makes it easy for indie developers to create engaging, enjoyable 2D games. Unity can deliver highly polished 2d games that can stand out in the competitive gaming market.
Additionally, Unity’s asset store offers numerous 2D game assets, plugins, templates, and code tools, making game development faster and more accessible than ever before.
You can even buy and download no-code systems for making your 2D game. Such as the graphic adventures of yore! Or you can use Bolt, with is used for visual scripting.
Is Unity 2D ‘true’ 2D?
Unity 2D is not a pure or ‘true’ 2D environment. 2D mode, when selected, changes the perspective of the 3D camera so that the camera looks at the scene straight on. You could say that Unity ‘fakes’ the 2-dimensional environment, but this is a simple and crude way of describing the situation.
By selecting 2D mode, the user changes the position of the 3D camera and in turn, the perspective. This makes the 2D artwork appear flat. The artwork is in fact stacked towards the camera on the Z index. If you were to imagine flat sheets of paper on top of one another, this is how the environment stacks.
As an analogy. If you were to stack clear sheets of plastic with artwork on them – similar to what you see in traditional animation. And then they stand directly on top of this layer stack. This would give you the illusion of the artwork being flat. Unity, in a virtual setup, is similar to this. You can experiment with 2D and 3D modes in Unity and see this in real-time.
The Image below illustrates the paragraph above.
Take note of the rabbit above in the bottom left when in 3D mode. And then how the perception is altered when 2D mode/view is selected.
Unity in 2D Mode
Is Unity good for 2D games? From my own experience, when experimenting with 2D and 3D games, Unity is more than capable of creating 2D games. I love the way Unity works when trying to create a 2D game!
Unity, as a game authoring tool for 2D games, is very powerful and intuitive. It may not be the easiest 2D engine on the market, but it is certainly one of the most rewarding. It also comes with a huge community of game devs. A developer game community should never be overlooked.
My experience also comes from a background in using Adobe Animate, which was formerly known as Flash for making 2D animation and 2D web games.
Unity is good for making 2D games. There are plenty of examples out there of great 2D games made in Unity. It boils down to the skill of developers and designers creating the Unity game when it comes to 2D. You may also find this topic helpful – can you create a 2D game without being able to code?. or Is Unity development easy?