Hello,

I have played video games since I can remember, now at 28 I decided I want to actually create a game. I have very little experience with programming and have never touched a game developer engine whatsoever. My questions are, what is the best engine for beginners? I hear Unreal Engine is good but not sure when there are so many out there. What is the best way to start? I have a story and idea for the mechanics of the game but not sure how to head in there or where to start.

Any tips, hints, or ideas help.

There really isn't an easily-recommendable "best." The good news is that most of the good options are freely available to try. I would recommend you download and try Unity, Unreal and maybe Godot, and follow along with some introductory tutorials for them and see which one you like more. You can also try software like Game Maker if you're looking for something simpler.

@tider89 How many games have you made thus far? If none, then maybe try making Pong in GameMaker so you can get a feel of what it takes to make a video game.

I second the nomination of GameMaker as a noob starting place.

I just started, Im currently learning C sharp and using unity for it awesome 3D and 2D features. It's good for starter in my opinion. It has more options. ( Keep in mind. You need to have a decent PC to work whit unity smoothly, For lower PC's i would suggest you to buy GameMaker 2. It's better to learn than GameMaker 1).

I have heard of Game Maker, and judging from the comments so far I will probably start with that. 

Thank you for your responses.

Again, anything helps

GameMaker is a great choice unless you're ready to devote many hours learning a general programming language, then game programming on top of the engine, library, or framework you're using.

I would suggest if you like GameMaker and you've mastered drag and drop, learn their scripting language "GML", this will give you a bit of a feel to using code before moving onto other ventures.