When most studios are turning to Unreal Engine or Unity, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 made a bold choice: sticking with CryEngine.

Unreal has broadened its focus beyond games into film, architecture, and simulation, while CryEngine has remained a more specialized tool. That narrow scope comes with challenges—documentation is limited, development updates are infrequent, and the learning curve is steep.

For most developers, I’d actually recommend looking at O3DE (formerly Amazon Lumberyard). It’s open source, actively developed, and retains much of CryEngine’s DNA—though even there, momentum has slowed.

As Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 director Daniel Vávra mentioned in this video, their team likely had the engineering resources to heavily customize CryEngine and work closely with Crytek. That’s not a luxury most indie devs have.

Still, it’s fascinating to see CryEngine resurface at this scale, reminding us that even “forgotten” tools can shine in the right hands.

Original Post: https://medium.com/cgboss/relooking-at-cryengine-after-kingdom-come-deliverance-2-ffa5b7ab669a