!rant
any game devs here? wanted to know what kind of engine and sdk you most prefer? what do you think is the best for basic 2d mobile games? how did you make your choice?

Hello ! I used to be a gamedev :) I worked with an in house 2d engine made in C++ / opengl.
Plus: total control, performances, cool langage (if you are a little bit masochist ^^), minimalist tech
Minus: reinventing the wheel, iteration Time, Bad design.
There is also cocos2dx, which is great, has a good community, and is very suited for mobile gamedev (actually we stole some of their code, like the node system.). Its minus: the Doc is poor, it's sometime a clusterfuck, and the differences beetwen all the versions aren't clear. Finally, you have obvisously unity, which works great, IS widespread, but Can have performances problems (plus it's closed source).

thanks for your reply, making a homebrew engine is probably a pain in the ass

Unity is probably the best for mobile games, due to both its flexibility and absolutely huge community for support

Unreal Engine for other stuff I'd say

Or...you can do what I did and write your own 2D game engine :)

Godot Engine is amazing for 2D Games. :)