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Note that this is primarily about 2D indie games. For 3D, it's not much of a question, you probably need an engine.
The best examples I can think of are Thumper, Devil Daggers, Hyper Demon, The Witness, and No Man's Sky. And of course, Minecraft!
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If you're familiar with web development, you can make games with HTML/JS, which is almost its own "engine." Think DOM elements for sprites, CSS animations for movement, requestAnimationFrame for an update loop, etc. This has the extra benefit of zero friction for players -- no native app installation necessary!
I have thought about doing this via PhaserJS in the past, but it just never clicks for some reason. I feel like my brain is missing some important component for making game design make sense.
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I have thought about doing this via PhaserJS in the past, but it just never clicks for some reason. I feel like my brain is missing some important component for making game design make sense.
I wrote some tutorials for making "grid-based" games that might give you some inspiration ( https://ganbaru.games/writing-grid-based-games/ ) It's actually kind of crazy how many different types of games work with this approach.
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Are you saying Carmack isn't a "talented and successful developer"?
I hate to say it but honestly, kinda, yeah... I do think that. Has he done anything significant since the early 1990s? All I've known him for since then is wasting a bunch of years spinning wheels at a virtual reality toy company and posting on Elon Musk's child pornography platform. I would not look to Carmack for tech inspiration in 2026, personally.