Personally, most of the time I spend prototyping is taken up by wrestling with tools, engines, and assets. Then I discover that my game design just isn't very fun. I've been experimenting with using LLMs to speed up building prototypes because I want to spend a higher percentage of my time adjusting game design and feel rather than solving problems that are irrelevant if the game's not fun to play.
If I was working on this full time the investment of learning an engine thoroughly would be worth it, I imagine. Game dev is a hobby for me, though, and what motivates me is making fun games. If I stumble across a game idea that's really fun and worth releasing to a wider audience there's nothing stopping me from building a better version of the game by hand at that point.
yes! you wrestle with it because the starting boilerplate is thpically a do-once operation. if you stay working on one project for a few years, you will no longer know how to start the next project, and with modern software, starting a new project in two years from now will be nothing like starting one now
I had the same issue where startup cost was a pain to get little prototypes going. I reduce the cost by making re-usable components. Even if I don't intend to reuse something I still make it a component-esque manner.
It helps that I mostly want to make certain types of games but I think everyone does. I have drop in CameraController, First Person rig, 2D inventory system, dialogue system etc. All flexible enough to get wired into the one off game manager or whatever it needs to plug into.
