I'll be a pedantic sod, it depends how you define engine.
XNA has really two main modern equivalents, MonoGame and FNA. MonoGame is an XNA based framework (including shit like namespaces) but it doesn't focus itself on replicating the original framework's behaviour. FNA is basically a 1-1 reimplementation of XNA including all of its weird quirks that's really meant for porting but you see it with new games too.
Absolutely true btw sometimes this is easier depending on the game concept
Going by numbers, ~97.5% of indie games on itch.io use a pre-existing engine or framework, with the remainder being some combination of lesser-used engines and, in some amount, custom-built engines. (Source)
Notch:
What about HolyC?
maybe try learning an engine instead of a raw programming language. gamemaker, rpgmaker, godot, those should be easier than unity or unreal i think.
I've tried gamemaker but tinkering with game logic still seems out of my grasp. I'm not a numbers guy so the numbers are a bit screwed. I have also tried rpgmaker and that while easier requires a ton of plugins and some knowledge of javascript to make something good, like on the level of off, funger or something like that. I have tried monogame/XNA which is the closest I came to actual proper code and I had a very hard time trying to learn graphics processing. I have tried unity and it's just an unwieldy piece of shit which barely runs.
Unreal is set up to be used primarily thru blueprints which are visual logical representations of code blocks, an apt comparison would be scratch I guess, plus with the ammount of shop shit you can import whatever free models you want and then start small with scripting.
I actually want to like Unity. Unreal seems like too much of an industry standard and I believe its not used that much for Indie games. Unity was used to make a lot of games I like like Hollow Knight and Silksong. Most of the ideas I have are for isometric and/or 2d top down games, very indie style games. Unreal will not handle them well and will be too complex for them. The only idea I have which might be okay for something like Unity or Unreal is a PS1 Resident Evil style horror game but with the real time sandbox mechanics of Dead Rising 1 (Think combat and tank controls/complex navigation with some complex interactivity. Youre trapped in a location divided into 5 zones and there are several events which popup in each zone based on real time. You have to learn to navigate the environment with the combat and obstacles while managing the events and time. The location itself changes over time with some events/zone access requiring specific items or routes. That will give player choices which will further influence story/events/ending.). Gamemaker would probably be most suitable since Ive seen a lot of Newgrounds games I really like made using it but I probably have to put in a lot of effort to learn it.
Unity and Unreal are both engines, you use them to make whatever game you want, Unity has more options for purely 2D but it also requires a certain ammount of C# knowledge to script. Point here is to just focus on using an Engine you think you can comfortably use (Blueprints) and keep at it, both Unity and Unreal have ginourmous ammounts of tutorials that you can rely upon and the biggest support bases as well, instead of being plagued by pre-production future proofing try to just make something small and take it from there.
I will say that whatever time you invest in any given engine isn't wasted just because you decide it isn't for you. You'll gain a lot of soft skills by learning the ins and outs of an engine, so even if it won't map one-to-one with what you do end up using, you'll at least have a grasp of the principles that broadly apply to most engines. Update loops, deltatime, and even in general lots of coding concepts that make a lot more sense when you're using them than they do in the abstract when you're first learning them.
