[ELI5] What exactly is game engine and why do games show what engine they are using?

Question

[ELI5] What exactly is game engine and why do games show what engine they are using?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

The engine is like a rulebook of systems the game uses to make things like the physics and graphics work. Rather than have to design all the game mechanics from the ground up the developers can use a prebuilt engine and just apply their own textures and models to it, saves a lot of time and money. They publicise what engine they use so consumers know what the games mechanics will broadly “feel” like and how robust/buggy it’s likely to be.