I’m in the middle of making a game now in C with raylib. Super small in scope. No level editor or tooling needed.

It’s easy for me. I just know C and raylib’s API is small. I got cross platform compilation going in an afternoon.

I’ve worked through some things with Godot. There’s just so much to learn that it’d take me longer to learn Godot than to get running with C.

Feel much the same as the author.

For me when there is a library or framework or "engine". You are often having to learn the specifics of how this thing works, and ALSO map your mind to the way it works. When you write things yourself you are only in your own mindset. So you can write your 90% self implementation in less time than learning this new mindset. Then you can build everything together without special ways of piping things together. Adding more frameworks or libraries is an exponential explosion in complexity, and more and more of your time is spent with glue code. When you write everything yourself, you are in one design space and things flow more naturally.