When you talk game engines, Unity is usually the first engine that pops to mind. And for good reasons.

It’s behind many classic and currently-trending popular games made for mobile: Among Us, Bloons TD 6, Call of Duty: Mobile, Subway Surfers, Hearthstone, and Genshin Impact.

Unity is also used to develop for desktop and console: Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Escape from Tarkov, Fall Guys, and Kerbal Space Program are notable examples.

But don’t forget the next frontier of gaming — virtual and augmented reality. Unity is particularly specialized in that too, with hit games like Beat Saber, VRChat, and Pokemon Go.

Why is Unity the most popular game engine? Because it’s easy to learn, easy to build across platforms, and easy to monetize.

So if you’re a beginner to Unity looking to break into any of these platforms, be it 2D or 3D development, I promise that there’s a course here that’s just right for you.

In this Best Courses Guide (BCG), I’ve carefully curated a list of free and paid courses that stand out for their quality of content, teaching style, and real-world applicability. From immersive tutorials to hands-on projects, here are my top picks.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• What is Unity?
• BCG Stats
• Notable Unity YouTubers to Follow
• Additional Unity Resources
• Best Courses Guides Methodology

Top Picks

What is Unity?

Unity, first launched by Unity Technologies in 2005, started as a Mac-exclusive game engine. It quickly evolved, gaining acclaim for its accessibility and multi-platform capabilities. Today, Unity is the most popular game engine according to SlashData, used by millions of developers worldwide. Its flexibility allows it to be used for everything from small indie games to major AAA titles.

But what exactly is Unity? At its core, Unity is a cross-platform game engine that enables developers to create 2D, 3D, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) games and experiences. Its versatility is one of its strongest points; Unity is compatible with over 25 platforms, including Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and even game consoles.

1. Ease of Use: Unity offers an intuitive user interface and is known for being more approachable for beginners compared to other engines like Unreal Engine or Godot.
2. Strong Community and Resources: With a vast community of developers, Unity boasts extensive resources for learning and troubleshooting.
3. Versatility and Cross-Platform Support: From mobile games to console blockbusters, Unity’s adaptability across platforms is unmatched.
4. Asset Store: Unity provides an Asset Store with a wealth of resources, significantly speeding up the development process. As an anecdote, the Unity dev in this game engine battle proves it hilariously so!
5. Regular Updates and Cutting-Edge Features: Unity consistently stays ahead of the curve, incorporating the latest technologies in gaming.

Statistics underscore Unity’s dominance in the industry: over 50% of all new mobile games were made with Unity, and it was used by 60% of all AR/VR content creators. This widespread adoption speaks volumes about its efficiency, power, and the scope it offers to creators.

Is Unity free to use?

Yes, Unity offers a free version known as Unity Personal for beginners, students, hobbyists, and freelancers. This version is available for beginners or companies whose revenue is less than $100,000 in the last 12 months. However, for more advanced features and capabilities, Unity offers several subscription plans including Unity Pro, Unity Enterprise, and Unity Industry, which come with a cost.

How does Unity compare to other game engines like Godot and Unreal Engine?

Although Unity and Unreal Engine (and Godot!) use C++ underneath the hood, Unity uses C# for scripting unlike C++ for Unreal Engine. Thus, beginners will find Unity significantly easier to learn.

And while Godot uses GDScript which is much more beginner-friendly than C#, Godot has a significantly smaller developer community compared to Unity, and not as established either. Thus, you’ll be more likely to find up-to-date resources and tutorials for Unity, especially on Unity’s own community learning platform.

What programming language does Unity support?

Unity primarily supports C# (C Sharp) as its programming language. C# in Unity is versatile and modern, allowing developers to write scripts for game mechanics, AI, and more. Unity used to support a language called UnityScript, which was similar to JavaScript, but it has been deprecated.

BCG Stats

• All of the courses are compatible with Unity 2021 or Unity 2022 unless stated otherwise.
• Eight of the courses in this BCG are free, whereas two are paid.

Best Free Official Course (Unity)

Whether you’re new to Unity or need to freshen up on the basics, the best place to start is from Unity’s free and official learning pathway, Unity Essentials.

This tutorial aims to be fun and engaging by providing a gamified experience to learning. Along with bite-sized video and text tutorials, you’ll earn XP for every project and quiz you complete to help you keep track of your progress. Once you’ve earned all available XP, you’ll be awarded with a nifty badge to show others your Unity experience. By the way, this is common across all Unity learning paths. You’ll also unlock game assets as a reward for completing the missions, adding on to the gamified experience.

The best part about this specific learning path are the optional microgames, which are pre-built games baked into the Unity Editor. You’ll learn a lot through experimentation, so I highly recommend you try them out for the experience.

The learning path is made up of three missions, in which some of the things you’ll accomplish are:

1. Get started with Unity: Installing Unity; Creating and managing Unity projects and versions in the Unity Hub; Navigating the Unity Editor, including 2D and 3D spaces in the Scene view
2. Explore Unity: What Unity is and how it is used; Creating your first 2D and 3D real-time experiences from scratch, including building objects, scripting, and audio; Publishing your build to the world
3. Learn Unity: Creating a learning action plan; Joining Unity’s creator community; Exploring game jams.

You’re expected to take this course at a pace of 4–5 hours a week for 2 weeks.

Institution	Unity
Instructor	James Turnage-Lanna
Prerequisites	None
Workload	8–10 hours
Enrollments	686K
Rating	4.2 / 5.0
Cost	Free
Exercises	Quizzes, Labs, and Microgames
Certificate	Badge

Best Free Beginners 3D Course (Code Monkey)

Learn Unity Beginner/Intermediate 2023 is the most comprehensive yet free course I’ve found for beginners.

In this 10+ hours course, Code Monkey will guide you through the process of developing a 3D game from scratch by building an Overcooked clone. And not just any throwaway demo either — it’ll be a feature-complete game with playable characters, interactive objects, animations, sound effects, music, user interface, configurable settings, post processing, controller input, win and lose conditions, and much more! Take a look at the final product on Steam.

Some instructors neglect teaching best practices and design patterns as they only care about getting the game working so you’ll feel accomplished. As a result, many beginners end up tripping on their own messy code when they inevitably move on to more complex projects, leading to unnecessary frustration. Code Monkey, however, makes sure to show you how to recognize bad code, refactor them, and also how to avoid them by passing on his good coding habits to you.

Code Monkey is a game developer with over ten years of experience as well as his own game studio. With his course receiving a lot of praise from the Unity subreddit, rest assured that you’re in safe hands.

To take this course, you’re required to watch these short videos on creating a Unity Project, navigating the Unity platform and understanding basic C#. Then, download the project files and follow along. Once you’re finished with the course, consider following up by implementing online functionality with the next course.

Channel	Code Monkey
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Hugo Cardoso
Prerequisites	Very basic C# and Unity
Workload	10–11 hours
Views	1.6M
Likes	64K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstration
Certificate	None

Best Free Multiplayer 3D Course (Code Monkey)

Learn Unity Multiplayer is a follow-up of the previous CodeMonkey course, where you’ll add the most important ingredient to any Overcooked game — multiplayer!

Using Unity’s official solution called Netcode for Game Objects, you’ll learn the difference between building a singleplayer and multiplayer game through hands-on development. For instance, you’ll learn to sync game actions and states between multiple clients, while fixing the bugs that pop up. You’ll also have to handle intricacies such as pausing, disconnects, late joins, and lags. Finally, you’ll set up game server hosting and matchmaking to be able to join your friends’ games.

By the end of this free course, you’ll be able to build any multiplayer game in any genre you can think of.

Enjoy his courses and want more? Code Monkey offers paid gamedev courses on his website as well as multiple in collaboration with gamedev.tv.

Channel	Code Monkey
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Hugo Cardoso
Prerequisites	C# and Unity experience
Workload	6–7 hours
Views	276K
Likes	11K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstration
Certificate	None

Best Paid 2D Course for Absolute Beginners (GameDev.tv)

GameDev.tv’s Unity courses are well-regarded among the Unity subreddits and official Discord community for its accessibility to new beginners, project-based learning, and high-quality lessons with clear explanations and examples.

But personally, the biggest value you get out of purchasing this paid course are the teaching assistants. They are active on the GameDev.tv forum and Discord server, and I highly recommend that you take full advantage of them whenever you get stuck.

In this course, you’ll build four 2D games entirely from scratch. Game by game, you’ll gradually implement important game features using Unity and C# programming. Furthermore, you’ll pick up good object-oriented coding practices and game design to apply in your future endeavors.

Not interested in 2D games? Check out the next course.

Here are the games you’ll make:

• Snow Boarder: A simple Side-Scrolling jumping game using Unity’s sprite shape tool
• Laser Defender: A Top-Down Space Shooter with enemies to shoot and dodge
• TileVania: A fast-paced classic Side-Scrolling Platformer using Unity’s Tilemap tool
• Quiz Master: A Quiz Game that focuses on learning how to set up user interface in Unity.

Though the course requirement states that you don’t need any programming knowledge, I still highly recommend that you take a brief C# tutorial before or alongside (pick one from my BCG). This is because the course doesn’t cover programming concepts in-depth.

Although the course uses Unity 2021, all of the concepts taught will still be relevant to Unity 2022. If you encounter any versioning problems, their support is there to help.

Institution	GameDev.tv
Provider	Udemy
Instructor	Rick Davidson and Gary Pettie
Prerequisites	None
Workload	18–19 hours
Enrollments	460K
Rating	4.7 / 5.0 (102K)
Cost	Paid
Exercises	Demonstrations
Certificate	Paid

Best Paid 3D Course for Absolute Beginners (GameDev.tv)

Whereas the previous course was for 2D games, this one is for 3D games.

In this paid project-based course, you’ll learn how to create 3D environments, character controllers, enemies, and a host of other essential game objects by building five games of varying genres and complexities.

• Obstacle Course: A simple sandbox where you make obstacles for the player to avoid
• Project Boost: A fun highly customisable rocket game where you explore 3D levels and avoid obstacles
• Argon Assault: A rail shooter set on a rocky planet where you avoid obstacles and destroy enemies for points
• Realm Rush: A tower defense game where you place towers to defend your base from invading enemies
• Zombie Runner: A first person shooter. Equipped with a gun, you must survive as long as you can against hordes of undead.

No programming experience needed, though as I said before, you’ll enjoy the course a lot more if you do have some.

This course is a bit more outdated, using Unity 2020. Nonetheless, everything you’ll learn still applies to Unity 2022. Rely on the teaching instructors if you encounter any problematic codes.

Institution	GameDev.tv
Provider	Udemy
Instructor	Ben Tristem, Rick Davidson, and Gary Pettie
Prerequisites	None
Workload	30–31 hours
Enrollments	214K
Rating	4.7 / 5.0 (41K)
Cost	Paid
Exercises	Demonstrations
Certificate	Paid

Best Free Short 2D Tutorial For Complete Beginners (Game Maker’s Toolkit)

If you find long tutorials intimidating and prefer to learn by doing, then this free short YouTube course is the perfect launching pad for you to start.

Don’t let the less-than-an-hour-long video length fool you into thinking that this course is trivial — far from it. Mark somehow manages to pack this course with lots of useful information and tips to get your engines roaring. Coupled with illustrative visualizations and easy-to-follow demonstrations, you’ll come out of this course even more motivated than before.

The Unity Tutorial For Complete Beginners will cover every step of the game development process with a set goal in mind: building a Flappy Bird clone. From installing Unity, to navigating the UI, to tinkering with the game engine, to writing your very first line of programming code, by the end of this course you’ll be comfortable enough to start exploring the Unity ecosystem on your own.

Channel	Game Maker’s Toolkit
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Mark Brown
Prerequisites	None
Workload	<1 hour
Views	2.2M
Likes	85K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstrations
Certificate	None

Best Free Shaders Programming Tutorials (Catlike Coding)

Are you one for no-nonsense text-based tutorials?

Catlike Coding’s tutorials, designed for both beginners and experienced developers, are clear and easy to follow. They feature helpful illustrations, short video clips, code snippets, and technical explanations to help you get a hang of how things should work.

The main reason why Catlike Coding’s tutorials have been recommended by many developers time and time again is because of his shaders tutorial. For those unfamiliar, shaders are used to create stunning visual effects in games. However, it involves stomaching some math. Fortunately, Catlike Coding breaks the math down into small manageable chunks. You’ll not only understand Unity’s default rendering pipeline, but you’ll also go beyond Unity’s standard shaders and discover more complex specialized rendering techniques to truly make your game an eye-popping experience.

Each tutorial is designed to be self-sufficient, although a few build upon previous ones. It’s recommended to start with the Basics tutorial, especially if you’re new to Unity and C#.

Institution	Catlike Coding
Instructor	Jasper Flick
Prerequisites	None to intermediate experience with Unity and C#
Workload	N/A
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstrations
Certificate	None

Best Free Virtual Reality Course (Unity)

In this project-based Unity learning path, you’ll learn to create immersive virtual reality experiences!

Even if you don’t have any programming experience, that’s fine. There are projects that require no code, and you can always come back later once you’ve gained some experience.

You’ll be expected to spend an average of 4–5 hours a week for six weeks, and the four missions you’ll encounter are:

• VR basics: Learn the basics of setting up a VR project and implementing simple interactivity like locomotion and grabbing objects.
  • Projects: Personalized interactive room and architectural visualization.
• Events and Interactions: Learn how to implement more complex interactions in VR to make the experience more immersive, such as audio, haptics, and user interfaces.
  • Projects: 3D painting app
• Ergonomics and Optimization: Explore ergonomics and optimization for VR for making apps as accessible and comfortable as possible.
  • Projects: Factory training simulation
• Custom VR Development: Learn to write scripts for advanced interactions in VR applications, and create your own unique VR project.
  • Projects: Prototype scene and escape room

Institution	Unity
Instructor	Joy Horvath
Prerequisites	Basic knowledge of Unity and programming
Workload	20–25 hours
Enrollments	321
Rating	4.3 / 5.0
Cost	Free
Exercises	Challenges and Labs
Certificate	None

Best Free Augmented Reality Course (Priyanshu Bhattacharjee)

Project-Based Augmented Reality Course with Unity Engine and AR Foundation taught by Priyanshu Bhattacharjee will help you start creating immersive 3D experiences.

This free course is completely suitable for Unity beginners. From setting up a Unity project, to importing and managing assets, to creating user interfaces, to implementing AR functionalities, to scripting, and finally to building and testing — the course will walk you through every step of the way. However, I recommend that you have some programming experience, as basic programming concepts (variables, classes) won’t be explained.

Though this course is targeted towards Android devices with ARCore, you can also target iOS devices by using Apple’s ARKit.

You’ll build four exciting projects for this course:

• Planets: Explore the stunning beauty of our solar system’s planets
• Jet Turbine Simulation: Dive into the inner workings of a jet turbine engine, from the blades to the combustion chamber
• GardeniAR: Brings the beauty of gardening into your own room with virtual plants
• Furnish: Effortlessly furnish your room with virtual furniture without the hassle of physically moving furniture.

Check out Priyanshu’s AR Development Roadmap if you’re keen on learning more.

Channel	freeCodeCamp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Priyanshu Bhattacharjee
Prerequisites	Basic C# or other programming language
Workload	2 hours
Views	72K
Likes	1.8K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstration
Certificate	None

Best Free Cross-Platform Mobile Development Course (Michael Doyon)

Build a Subway Surfer clone complete with procedural world generation, customizable accessories, shop system, ad monetization, and more!

Originally paid but now free, Michael Doyon will take you on a journey through the entire game development cycle, from planning to publishing — to both the Google Play Store and Apple Store.

If you’re just getting into mobile development, you’ll reap lots from this course. Note that it does assume some programming experience from you, preferably C++.

• Utilizing Universal Render Pipeline for improved graphics
• Creating visual effects using Mechanim animator and Shadergraph
• Manage game mechanics including player movement, menus, and saving game progress
• Understand how to monetize the game, including using Unity Advertisement.

Michael suggests that you take this course one day at a time for two weeks.

Note: This course uses Unity 2019, but everything you’ll learn will remain relevant for 2021 and 2022. Check the YT comment section or his Discord if you encounter any problems.

Channel	Mercenary Camp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Michael Doyon
Prerequisites	Experience with any programming language
Workload	13–14 hours
Views	118K
Likes	4.4K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Demonstrations
Certificate	None

Notable Unity YouTubers to Follow

• Dapper Dino: Bite-sized Unity tutorials regarding multiplayer.

Additional Unity Resources

• Introduction to Game Development (Unity and C#): by Sebastian Lague, it is one of the best free introductions to game development in Unity and C# on YouTube. Even though it’s using an outdated version of Unity, I highly recommend you give it a watch anyways, as the lessons taught are perennial.
• C# Programming for Unity Game Development: from University of Colorado System. It’s very comprehensive as it teaches C# from the ground up for Unity beginners. Some of the code may not work though, as it’s out of date.

Best Courses Guides Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 200K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of ≈500 courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.