Looking for advice on what would be the best game engine for a 2d puzzle game where there are overlapping geometric shapes that you individually move, creating new shapes within. There would be a random beginning board, and a “goal” board to try and achieve in the least amount of time and moves.

I‘m a complete novice at programming. Simply looking for the best platform to learn to see it on a mobile device.

Thank you?

Hi

You can try Defold engine, you program in LUA which is very easy to learn.

Good luck!

“best” engine is a difficult problem, we haven't figured out yet how to universally agree that some solution beats all other solutions. If we could, we'd have one solution for every problem!!

So rather than “best” I'd suggest you go for something you like. A 2D puzzle game isn't very complicated, and given your expertise level, you're not going to hit the limits of most if not all engines out there. So try a few that fit in the “mobile device” goal, and pick the one you like best.

You have to find out what is important to you in an engine. The only way to do that is to try and find out if it delivers what you expect. It will give you an informed judgement of the product, and you can use that expertise in a next project.

My default recommendation for beginners is Godot. It's not anywhere near perfect, but it's fairly popular, fairly full-featured, open source, and cross-platform.

Thank you!